Rethinking Assessment: How Do We Capture Thinking?

Throughout this series, I have been asking a fairly simple question:

If we want students to think, how do we design learning that actually requires them to think?

We have looked at the importance of starting with meaningful learning outcomes, building the necessary foundations, designing activities that require reasoning, and creating opportunities for creative thinking.

But there is a problem we cannot avoid.

Eventually, we have to assess something.

And that brings us to a difficult question:

If thinking is part of what we want students to learn, how do we actually capture evidence of that thinking?

A familiar classroom situation

Imagine a Computer Science class.

Students have spent several lessons learning about algorithms. They have discussed different approaches, written code, tested their solutions and debugged their mistakes.

At the end of the unit, the teacher gives them an assessment:

“Write a program that solves the following problem.”

The students submit their programs.

One works perfectly.

Another produces the correct output but uses an inefficient approach.

A third has several errors.

The teacher marks them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this assessment.

It tells us something important: Can the student produce a working solution?

But does it tell us everything we want to know?

  • Can we see how the student approached the problem?
  • Can we see whether they considered alternative solutions?
  • Can we see why they chose their particular approach?
  • Can we see what they understood when their first attempt failed?

Perhaps not.

And this is where I think assessment becomes much more interesting.

The final answer is only part of the story

Over many years of teaching, I have often noticed that two students can arrive at the same answer through very different learning journeys.

One may have understood the underlying concept and deliberately selected an appropriate approach.

Another may have memorised a similar example and adapted it just enough to produce the expected output.

The final answer may look almost identical.

The thinking behind it may not be.

Likewise, a student can sometimes produce an imperfect final answer while demonstrating very good reasoning along the way.

  • Perhaps they identified the right problem.
  • Perhaps they tested several approaches.
  • Perhaps they recognised why their first solution failed.
  • Perhaps they could explain exactly what they would change next.

If we assess only the final product, much of this evidence disappears.

This is not an argument for abandoning marks or conventional assessment.

It is an argument for asking whether the evidence we collect matches what we say we value.


We have been here before

This connects directly with an earlier case in this series:

When the Grade Becomes the Goal

In that post, I questioned what happens when students begin to see the grade as the destination rather than as feedback about their learning.

There is another side to that problem.

What happens when the assessment system itself makes the grade the easiest thing to measure?

If the easiest evidence to collect is a final answer, a final product or a final score, we can gradually design learning around what is easiest to measure.

Then something interesting happens.

We say we want:

  • critical thinking
  • problem solving
  • creativity
  • independent learning

But we assess primarily:

  • correctness
  • completion
  • recall
  • final output

The contradiction may not be intentional.

But students notice it.

And students are very good at working out what the system actually rewards.

A practical assessment template

Here is a simple template I would use when designing an assessment intended to capture higher-order thinking.

It does not need to become a complicated rubric or a 20-page assessment document.


------------------- The Template -----------------------

HOTS Assessment Design Template


1. What do I want students to learn?

    By the end of this assessment, students should be able to:
     _________________________________________________________________

2. What kind of thinking should they demonstrate?

☐ Analyse
☐ Compare
☐ Evaluate
☐ Justify
☐ Solve an unfamiliar problem
☐ Generate alternatives
☐ Design / Create
☐ Reflect / Revise

**Choose the thinking that genuinely belongs to the learning outcome. Don't tick everything simply because it sounds impressive.

3. What will students actually have to do?

Students will be asked to:
 ______________________________________________________________________

The important question here is:

Could students complete this task successfully by simply reproducing something they have already seen?

If yes, reconsider the task.

4. What evidence of thinking will I collect?

For example:

  • explanation of their approach;
  • comparison of alternatives;
  • evidence from testing;
  • justification of a decision;
  • annotated code or design;
  • reflection on a failed attempt;
  • revision following feedback;
  • explanation of what they would change and why.
Evidence I will collect:
 ____________________________________________________________________

5. What will I assess?

Instead of assessing only the final answer, consider separating the evidence into areas such as:

Evidence What am I looking for?
Understanding Does the student demonstrate sound conceptual knowledge?
Reasoning Can the student explain how they arrived at a decision?
Application Can they use knowledge in the given context?
Evaluation Can they examine alternatives and justify a choice?
Creativity Can they generate or develop meaningful alternatives?
Reflection Can they recognise what worked, what didn't and why?

Not every assessment needs all six.

The point is to make the intended evidence visible.

6. What would convince me that learning has happened?

This is perhaps the most important question.

Complete this sentence:

“I would be confident that the student has achieved the learning outcome if I could see…....”

That answer should guide the assessment.


----------------- End of Template ---------------



A small warning for teachers

There is one trap here that I would be careful about. Don't turn this into another assessment bureaucracy.

It is very easy to take a simple learning activity and add a reflection, a justification, a comparison, a rubric, a self-assessment and three more submission requirements - until the assessment becomes heavier than the learning itself.

The purpose is not to collect more evidence. It is to collect better evidence of the learning we actually care about. Sometimes one well-designed question can reveal more thinking than an elaborate rubric. So before adding another assessment component, I would ask:

“What will this additional piece of evidence actually tell me that I don't already know?”

If the answer is “not much,” leave it out. Good assessment should make learning more visible, not make learning more complicated.



A small example

Let's apply the template to the programming example.

Learning outcome

Students will be able to select and justify an appropriate algorithm for an unfamiliar problem.

Assessment task

Given a problem and several possible approaches, students will test at least two approaches, analyse their results and recommend one solution.

Evidence collected

Students submit:

  • their working solution;
  • test results;
  • a brief comparison of the approaches;
  • their recommendation;
  • a short explanation of why they rejected the alternative.

Now the teacher can see more than whether the final program works.

There is evidence of:

application → analysis → evaluation → justification

The assessment has become a window into the student's thinking.

And that is really what we are trying to achieve.

Assessment does not always need to mean another test

When we talk about capturing thinking, it is easy to imagine that we need another elaborate examination.

I don't think we do.

A student's thinking can become visible through:

  • a design decision;
  • a comparison between two approaches;
  • a debugging explanation;
  • a short reflection;
  • a discussion;
  • a concept map;
  • a prototype;
  • an annotated piece of code;
  • a justification for a decision;
  • a revision showing how feedback was used.

These are not necessarily separate assessments.

They can become evidence embedded within the learning activity itself.

That distinction matters.

If we design an activity in #03 that requires students to compare, investigate and justify, then we should not suddenly assess them only by asking for the final answer.

The assessment should capture some of the thinking the activity was designed to generate.

Creativity creates an even bigger challenge

The issue becomes even more interesting when we move into the territory we explored in #04 - Designing for Creative Thinking.

How do you assess creativity?

There is an obvious danger here.

If we tell students:

“Be creative.”

... and then provide a rigid marking scheme that effectively rewards one expected solution, students will quickly learn that creativity is optional.

Also,  the answer is not to give marks simply because something looks unusual.

Creative work still needs criteria.

We can ask:

  • Did the student generate alternatives?
  • Did they move beyond the first obvious solution?
  • Did they respond meaningfully to constraints?
  • Did they explain their choices?
  • Did they improve an existing idea?
  • Did they test their idea?
  • Can they identify its strengths and limitations?

The assessment is then not trying to measure some mysterious quality called “creativity.”

It is looking for observable evidence of creative thinking.

That is a much more useful proposition.

From grading the product to seeing the process

This does not mean that the final product is unimportant.

It is.

  • A program needs to work.
  • A mathematical solution needs to be valid.
  • A software design needs to meet its requirements.
  • A student's argument needs evidence.

There are standards that matter.

But perhaps we should think of assessment as having two complementary purposes:

What did the student produce?

and

What can the student's work tell us about their thinking?

The first gives us the product.

The second gives us evidence of the learning process.

And sometimes the second tells us things that the first cannot.



Small evidence can be powerful

One thing I have learned from teaching is that we don't always need a huge assessment to understand whether learning is happening.

  • A five-minute explanation can reveal more than a long written answer.
  • A student's annotated code can reveal more than a score.
  • A short reflection can reveal a misconception that a correct answer concealed.
  • A comparison between two solutions can reveal whether the student understands why one approach might be preferable.

These small pieces of evidence can accumulate.

Instead of placing the entire burden of judgement on one final examination, we can build a body of evidence across the learning journey.

This is especially important when the learning outcome is not simply:

“Can the student remember this?”

but:

“Can the student use what they know to reason, make decisions, create and adapt?”

The assessment should follow the learning design

This brings us back to the beginning of the series.

In #01, we started with the learning outcome.

That principle becomes particularly important here.

If the outcome is:

“Students will understand the principles of sorting algorithms.”

then an assessment testing understanding may be appropriate.

If the outcome is:

“Students will compare algorithms and justify an appropriate choice for a given situation.”

then simply asking them to reproduce an algorithm is not enough.

And if the outcome is:

“Students will design and evaluate an algorithmic solution to an unfamiliar problem.”

then the assessment needs to give students an opportunity to design and evaluate.

It sounds obvious.

Yet I have seen how easily the assessment becomes disconnected from the learning objective.

We teach one thing. We practise another. And then we assess something easier to mark.

That is where alignment breaks down.

The journey matters

Looking back at the five posts so far, the progression now feels quite deliberate.

#01 — Start With the End
What do we actually want students to learn?

↓

#02 — Build the Foundations
What do they need to know before they can think meaningfully?

↓

#03 — Design Activities That Require Thinking
How can we make reasoning, analysis and decision-making part of the activity?

↓

#04 — Design for Creative Thinking
How can we move students from finding solutions to generating possibilities?

↓

#05 — Rethink Assessment
How can we capture evidence of the thinking we actually value?

This brings us to the final question.

  • We have talked about outcomes.
  • We have talked about foundations.
  • We have talked about activities.
  • We have talked about creativity.
  • We have talked about assessment.

But these things should not exist as five separate pieces of good teaching.

They need to work together.

And that is where the final post in this series will take us:

What happens when we stop designing lessons and activities in isolation and start designing the entire course as a learning journey?

 


What do you think? 👇

I'd be interested to hear from teachers, educators, lecturers, academic leaders and other education professionals who have experience with these issues. If you have a different perspective, a classroom experience, or an approach that has worked for you, please feel free to share it in the comments.

Thoughtful disagreement is welcome too. The aim is to learn from one another and keep the conversation going. Thank you!

Next: 06 - Putting It All Together: Designing the Course as a Learning Journey

In this series of posts:

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