Self-assessments encourage students to reflect on their growing skills and knowledge, learning goals and processes, products of their learning, and progress in the course. Student self-assessment can take many forms, from low-stakes check-ins on their understanding of the day’s lecture content to self-assessment and self-evaluation of their performance on major projects. Student self-assessment is also an important practice in courses that use alternative grading approaches. While the foci and mechanisms of self-assessment vary widely, at their core the purpose of all self-assessment is to “generate feedback that promotes learning and improvements in performance” (Andrade, 2019). Fostering students’ self-assessment skills can also help them develop an array of transferable lifelong learning skills, including:

  • Metacognition: Thinking about one’s own thinking. Metacognitive skills allow learners to “monitor, plan, and control their mental processing and accurately judge how well they’ve learned something” (McGuire & McGuire 2015).
  • Critical thinking: Carefully reasoning about the evidence and strength of evidence presented in support of a claim or argument.
  • Reflective thinking: Examining or questioning one’s own assumptions, positionality, basis of your beliefs, growth, etc.
  • Self-regulated learning: Setting goals, checking in on one’s own progress, reflecting on what learning or study strategies are working well or not so well, being intentional about where/when/how one studies, etc.

Students' skills to self-assess can vary, especially if they have not encountered many opportunities for structured self-assessment. Therefore, it is important to provide structure, guidance, and support to help them develop these skills over time.

  • Create a supportive learning environment so that students feel comfortable sharing their self-assessment experiences (Create a Supportive Course Climate).
  • Foster a growth-mindset in students by using strategies that show students that abilities can be grown through hard work, effective strategies, and help from others when needed (Fostering Growth Mindset; Identifying teaching behaviors that foster growth mindset classroom cultures).
  • Set clear, specific, measurable, and achievable learning outcomes so that students know what is expected of them and can better assess their progress (Creating and Using Learning Outcomes).
  • Explain the concept of self-assessment and some of the benefits (above).
  • Provide students with specific prompts and/or rubrics to guide self-assessment (assessing student learning with Rubrics).
  • Provide clear instructions (see an example under Rubrics below).
  • Encourage students to make adjustments to their learning strategies (e.g., retrieval, spacing, interleaving, elaboration, generation, reflection, calibration; Make It Stick, pp. 200-225) and/or set new goals based on their identified areas for improvement.

Self-Assessment Techniques

Expand the boxes below to learn more about techniques you can use to engage students in self-assessment and decide which would work best for your context.

To foster self-assessment as part of students’ regular learning practice you can embed prompts directly into your formative and summative assignments and assessments. 

Example prompts include (Race, 2001):
  • What do you think is a fair grade for the work you have handed in, and why do you think so?
  • What did you do best in this task?
  • What did you do least well in this task?
  • What did you find was the hardest part of completing this task?
  • What was the most important thing you learned in doing this task?
  • If you had more time to complete the task, what (if anything) would you change, and why?

Providing students the opportunity to regularly engage in writing that allows them to reflect on their learning experiences, habits, and practices can help students retain learning, identify challenges, and strengthen their metacognitive skills. Reflective writing may take the form of short writing prompts related to assignments (see Embedded self-assessment prompts above and Classroom Assessment Techniques) or writing more broadly about recent learning experiences (e.g., What? So What? Now What? Journals). Reflective writing is a skill that takes practice and is most effective when done regularly throughout the course (Using Reflective Writing to Deepen Student Learning).

Rubrics are an important tool to help students self-assess their work, especially for self-assessment that includes multiple prompts about the same piece of work. If you’re providing a rubric to guide self-assessment, it is important to also provide instructions on how to use the rubric.

An example:

Students are using a rubric (e.g., grading rubric for written assignments (docx)) to self-assess a draft essay before turning it in or making revisions. As part of that process, you want them to assess their use of textual evidence to support their claim. Here are example instructions you could provide (adapted from Beard, 2021):

To self-assess your use of textual evidence to support your claim, please follow these steps:

  • In your draft, highlight your claim sentence and where you used textual evidence to support your claim
  • Based on the textual evidence you used, circle your current level of skill on the provided rubric
  • Use the information on the provided rubric to list one action you can take to make your textual evidence stronger

Self-assessment surveys can be helpful if you are asking students to self-assess their skills, knowledge, attitudes, and/or effectiveness of study methods they used. These may take the form of 2-3 free-response questions or a questionnaire where students rate their agreement with a series of statements (e.g., I am skilled at creating formulas in Excel”, “I can define ‘promissory coup’”, “I feel confident in my study skills”). A Background Knowledge Probe administered at the very beginning of the course (or when starting a new unit) can help you better understand what students already know (or don’t know) about the class subject. Self-assessment surveys administered over time can help you and students assess their progress toward meeting defined learning outcomes (and provide you with feedback on the effectiveness of your teaching methods). Student Assessment of their Learning Gains is a free tool that you can use to create and administer self-assessment surveys for your course.

Wrappers are tools that learners use after completing and receiving feedback on an exam or assignment (exam and assignment wrappers, post-test analysis) or even after listening to a lecture (lecture wrappers). Instead of focusing on content, wrappers focus on the process of learning and are designed to provide students with a chance to reflect on their learning strategies and plan new strategies before the next assignment or assessment. The Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon includes multiple examples of exam, homework, and paper wrappers for several disciplines.

References:

Andrade, H. L. (2019). A critical review of research on student self-assessment. Frontiers in Education, 4, Article 87. 

Beard, E. (2021, April 27). The importance of student self-assessment. Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).

Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

McGuire, S. Y., & McGuire, S. (2015). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. New York, NY: Routledge. 

McMillan, J. H., & Hearn, J. (2008). Student Self-Assessment: The Key to Stronger Student Motivation and Higher Achievement. Educational Horizons, 87(1), 40–49.

Race, P. (2001). A briefing on self, peer and group assessment (pdf). LTSN Generic Centre, Assessment Series No. 9. 

RCampus. (2023, June 7). Student self-assessments: Importance, benefits, and implementation. 

Teaching (n.d.). Student Self-Assessment. University of New South Wales Sydney.

Further Reading & Resources: 

Bjork, R. (n.d.). Applying cognitive psychology to enhance educational practice. UCLA Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Classroom Assessment Techniques. University of Colorado Boulder.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Formative Assessments. University of Colorado Boulder.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Student Peer Assessment. University of Colorado Boulder.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Summative Assessments. University of Colorado Boulder

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Summative Assessments: Types. University of Colorado Boulder