Supporting students to build evaluative judgement (in assessment and beyond)

In July 2024, I gave a lightning talk [slides here] on the importance of evaluative judgment in assessment and beyond. Drawing on the work of David Boud et al. (2018), I shared how I had built in an aspect of evaluative judgement into a Year I oracy based law assessment.

What is evaluative judgement?

“Evaluative judgement is the capability to make decisions about the quality of work of oneself and others.” (Boud et al., 2018)

Central to the concept is that students need to self-evaluate. They need to be able to self-assess their work and the work of others, including source materials. They need to be able to consider where they are in their learning and where they need to improve. This is linked to the concept of sustainable assessment. Are we helping students develop sustainable skills?

Evaluative Judgement in a world of generative AI

More than ever, evaluative judgment is a skill we need to navigate a world of, and with, generative AI. Do we or our students have the required skillset to assess the quality of a source or an output? For more on this, I would suggest reading ‘Developing evaluative judgement for a time of generative artificial intelligence’ by Margaret Bearman et al. (2024). There they note that:

“Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly increased capacity for producing textual, visual and auditory outputs, yet there are ongoing concerns regarding the quality of those outputs. There is an urgent need to develop students’ evaluative judgement – the capability to judge the quality of work of self and others – in recognition of this new reality.” (Bearman et al., 2024)

Students must weigh up the credibility of generative outputs and indeed be able to evaluate the ethical processes of these generative tools.

Using evaluative judgement in my conversations with students

In helping students to develop this skill, I regularly ask students to evaluate themselves and their work.

For example, in a seminar developing voice work skills I might say, in a 1-2-1 context, ‘what feedback would you give yourself'?’

Where can you build in evaluative judgement into your teaching and assessment practices?

References

Bearman, M., Tai, J., Dawson, P., Boud, D., & Ajjawi, R. (2024). Developing evaluative judgement for a time of generative artificial intelligence. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–13.

Boud, D. et al. (2018) Developing Evaluative Judgement in Higher Education: Assessment for Knowing and Producing Quality Work Abingdon, Oxon; Routledge.

Tai, J.,Ajjawi, R., Boud, D., Dawson, P., & Panadero, E. (2018). Developing evaluative judgement: enabling students to make decisions about the quality of work. Higher Education, 76(3), 467–481