In this article we will walk you through the intended purpose of Self-Assessment of Work.

Self-assessment is a form of feedback given to oneself. It helps students think of possible adjustments they can make for their processes and deliverables (e.g. essays, presentations, etc.), and also helps them enhance learning outcomes and performance.

With Self Assessment, students can review their own skills or those of their own group effectively with the criteria & rubrics set by the instructor. Thus, instructors can motivate students to have the ownership of their own learning effectively.

You can use the Self-Assessment tool for both deliverables (e.g. essay, slides, etc.) and skills (collaboration, presentation, etc.). For deliverables, you can choose Self-Assessment on Work in the Tool Picker. For skills, choose Self-Assessment on Skills and then follow the streamlined activity setup process.

In this article, we will focus on the Self-Assessment of Work. Below, you can find our user guides for this feature:

Self-assessment can be beneficial for teachers, helping them gain insight into how students perceive themselves compared to their peers or whether there was free-riding in group work. Importantly, it is extremely valuable for student learning as self-assessment creates effective self-reflection activities.

Individual and Group Assessment: Assignments are made for individual students to assess their own work, or for peer groups to assess their own activities collectively.

Autonomy over Self-reflection: Students upload and review their assignments based on criteria set by instructors, leaving a great deal of autonomy in a multitude of activities and classrooms.

Autonomy over grading: Transparent and customizable grading gives students more responsibility in evaluating their own work, thus increasing engagement and motivation.

Self-Assessment is also a plugin that can be enabled in the setup of the following tools:

In the workflow, this means that a student will review themselves using the same criteria before reviewing their peers. This feature can be enabled by toggling the switch in the settings.

Individual vs. peer self-assessment: Teachers can change the type of self-assessment activity from individuals reviewing their own work to students reviewing their work as a group if it is a group activity.

Customizable criteria or rubrics: Structure and customize self-assessment criteria with options such as qualitative feedback criteria, scales, or rubrics.

Configurable grading: Teachers can convert any activity into a summative task, configure which steps of the assignment to be graded and how much each should count to determine the final grade.

Turnitin integration: If the institution has a license with Turnitin, instructors can enable plagiarism check setting for students to have their submissions reviewed for plagiarism by Turnitin before the automated feedback activity.

Scaffolds student evaluation: Students naturally engage in comparative processes, where they'll use their own and their peer's work or performance as a frame of reference for comparison. However, these processes can often be quite unsystematic, and in that way not so fruitful for students. By implementing a scaffolded self-assessment, it can yield a more guided evaluation and revision for students.

Self-assessment linked to self-regulated learning: By encouraging students to examine their learning, they are encouraged to take more ownership of their learning too, including their reflection, self-monitoring, planning and goal-setting.

Linked to learning and skill development: In general, the research trends indicates that self-assessment is linked to learning and skill development. This can be linked back to the many skills/processes self-assessment activates, such as self-regulated learning, as well as becoming more intellectually humble by gaining an accurate understanding of the limits of your knowledge.

Although there are many documented benefits of self-assessment for students, the research has been undertaken in many different contexts, so it is also important to understand that these benefits may not be equally likely under all circumstances.

Self-assessment yields the highest benefits for students when assessment is formative and focused on student learning and not on outcomes. Moreover, self-assessment should be scaffolded.

Example: By anchoring the self-assessment to defined criteria (such as a rubric) that students understand, this can substantially boost the benefits realized.

When used in summative assessment, students tend to over-evaluate themselves because it is linked to their grade, and their evaluation does often not match that of their instructor. This effect is not seen when used in formative assessment.

A final note is on the cohort you are teaching. Research indicates that university students understand the benefits of self-assessment and therefore are able to reap the benefits, for younger students it may be valuable to make the purpose and outcomes evident to students.