Home Teach and assess Assessment overview​ Unpacking assessment

Unpacking assessment

These resources support educators in interpreting the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies achievement standards and provide assessment guidance.

Engaging students in assessment

Watch this video to gain a sense of how the Achievement Standards for the Australian Curriculum Digital Technologies can be used for assessment. The video provides information to support you to create quality assessment tasks.

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Infographic: CSER's 4 simple ideas for engaging students in assessment. Introduction: Students can be engaged in the Digital Technologies assessment process to harness assessment as learning. Students adopt strategies and reflect on their learning experience to use assessment to support new learning. Step 1: Reflect. Students reflect on their understanding of a topic, development of skills or learning processes for example, students record a reflection about their design processes and strategies for creating a digital solution, including reflecting on aspects such as planning and time management in the more senior years. Step 2: Self-rating. Students rate their knowledge or confidence about a topic beofre they begin and at the end of a period of instruction. Students are asked to comment on their learning growth and what they would still like to know or work on in future learning. Step 3: Feed forward. Incorporate an opportunity for students to seek and provide feedback on digital solutions during the period of instruction. Invite students to explain how they had used the feedback to improve their solution. Step 4: Co-construct. Involve students as co-creators of assessment instruments, such as checklists and rubrics, using co-development as a learning experience. For example, co-constructing a rubric for an app based on class research and discussion of what students identify as good app design.

Formative assessment

Monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used to inform future teaching and learning.

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Infographic: CSER's 4 simple ideas for formative assessment. Introduction: Formative assessment is ongoing within classrooms and is used for the purposes of monitoring student learning and providing feedback, for teachers to inform their teaching, and for students to inform their learning. Step 1: Concept maps. Students draw a concept map to represent their understanding of a topic and relationships between concepts. For example, for all kinds of topics such as digital systems and digital citizenship. Step 2: Checklists. Use a checklist with defined Digital Technologies skills or knowledge that you are looking for and check-off during classroom observations. For example, during programming or data representation activities. Step 3: Think aloud. Sit alongside a student and invite them to explain their work. Use prompts to promote elaboration. Teachers look for evidence of their understanding of content knowledge and skill. For example, explaining digital solutions or explaining how peripheral devices are used. Step 4: Quizzes. Use online or paper quizzes to test students' knowledge of a topic at the start and during a period of instruction to monitor progress and identify gaps and misconceptions. For example, quizzes on digital systems or programming knowledge.

Summative assessment

Evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional sequence by comparing the learning against the achievement standards and content descriptors.

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Infographic: CSER's 4 simple ideas for summative assessment. Introduction: Formative assessment is for the purposes of twice-yearly reporting by schools to parents and carers on the progress and achievement of students. Step 1: Test. Students participate in an online or paper-based test at the end of the unit of instruction. Questions test their understanding of content knowledge and processes and production skills. Compare with an earlier quiz to determine growth. Step 2: Final project. Students showcase a project they have been working on throughout the period of instruction that brings together knowledge and skills. Students could prepare artefacts that support the explanation of their project (for example, annotated posters, instructions or video). Step 3: Presentation. Students present to the class or other stakeholders a topic relevant to the period of instruction. It could be a pitch or presentation of a digital solution or a presentation on a Digital Technologies topic (such as interacting online safely or data representation). Alternatively students could produce a video to share. Step 4: Text production. Combine English with Digital Technologies and have students demonstarte their understanding of knowledge and production skills through the production of text. For example, witing a narrative or procedural text that demonstrates an understanding of algorithms or an Explanation for a digital solution they have created.

Assessment in Digital Technologies webinar

View the recorded webinar to hear Martin Richards, content manager of the Digital Technologies Hub, and Rebecca Vivian, research fellow at CSER, discuss assessment in the Digital Technologies curriculum.