Open Assessment: Opening the Conversation
Open Assessment approaches assessment as an ongoing conversation rather than a single act of judgment. It emphasizes transparency, feedback, reflection, and learner agency. Helping students understand how learning is evaluated and inviting them into that process is key.
Open Assessment does not reduce standards or rigor so much as it makes expectations visible, centers formative feedback, and creates space for students to reflect on their learning over time.
Open assessment asks how can this process support learning, rather than interrupt it.
The Call: An Invitation to Act
Use Open Assessment to:
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Make expectations transparent
Clarify criteria, purposes, and values behind assessments so students know what “good work” looks like. -
Shift emphasis from grades to learning
Prioritize feedback, revision, and reflection over one-time performance. -
Build trust through dialogue
Invite students to participate in assessment conversations through self-assessment, peer feedback, or learning reflections.
Open assessment is not all-or-nothing. It begins by opening one assessment conversation.
Examples from Practice
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An assignment includes a rubric written in plain language and discussed with students before submission.
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Students submit a short reflection explaining how their work meets the criteria and what they would improve next.
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A course includes opportunities to revise work based on feedback rather than treating submissions as final.
These practices reduce anxiety, clarify expectations, and reinforce assessment as part of learning, not separate from it.
Your Response: A Short Action Plan
Pause and reflect.
Think about one assessment you currently use.
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Where might students benefit from more clarity?
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Where could reflection or dialogue be added?
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What is one small way assessment could feel more supportive?
Below is just an empty space to envision your response. Feel free to keep track of your responses in your own way. You will be asked to make a short response in each chapter, so collecting them all in one space would be a very learner-centred thing for you to do for yourself!
My first open assessment action will be:
(You don’t have to redesign everything. One conversation is enough.)
Looking Ahead: Connecting to the Next Chapter
This chapter focused on assessment as dialogue, opening how learning is evaluated. The next chapter will explore open design and course transparency: how openness can shape course structure, navigation, and communication so students can more easily understand how learning unfolds across a term. Open design can open the pathway. Again, this is more about internal openness with each other than openness to the world. Both of these levels of openness have similar benefits.
Deep Dive: Learn More About Open Assessment
Open Assessment – Extending Into the Open (Pressbooks chapter, eCampusOntario)
This open-access chapter offers a clear, practice-grounded exploration of what open assessment is, how it differs from traditional assessment, and how it functions within open pedagogy. It situates assessment as a participatory, transparent, and learning-centered practice rather than a closed act of measurement.
Why this resource?
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Conceptual + practical balance: It blends theory with concrete examples (peer assessment, self-assessment, public artifacts) that instructors can readily adapt.
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Designed for educators: Written in an accessible, textbook-like style that supports reflection and professional learning.
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Open by design: Fully open access and openly licensed, making it easy to quote, remix, and integrate directly into an OER without friction.
This resource helps you open assessment by reframing assessment as a shared, transparent learning process and giving you language, principles, and examples to design assessments that are renewable, participatory, and learner-empowering.
