In higher education, the terms assessing and assessment are often used as if they mean the same thing. At first glance, both relate to the act of “judging” student learning. However, a closer look reveals an important difference, one that influences how students experience learning and how educators design their teaching.
Assessment: The Product
When we talk about assessment, we usually mean the product. It’s the essay, the lab report, the performance, or the exam. It’s the piece of work that is graded, recorded, and counted (let’s not get into the grading debate here, but you can read more about this below…)
Assessment is tangible and fixed. It provides a snapshot of student performance at a particular point in time. The benefit is clarity: students know what they are being measured against, and educators have evidence that can be marked and moderated. But the downside is that assessment often reduces a complex learning process into a single number, letter, or percentage.
Assessing: The Process
Assessing, by contrast, is about the process. It’s not the product itself but the ongoing act of noticing, questioning, and giving feedback as learning unfolds. Assessing happens when we discuss a draft with a student, when peers give each other feedback, when reflective writing uncovers struggles, or when educators pose probing questions.
Where assessment closes down with a final judgment, assessing keeps the conversation open. It is relational, formative, and oriented towards growth.
Is “Assessing” the Right Word?
The distinction between ‘assessment‘ and ‘assessing’ is useful, but the language itself can feel somewhat slippery. For many, assessing just sounds like “doing assessment,” which risks collapsing the two back together. This raises a larger question: do we need a different vocabulary altogether to describe the dialogic, growth-focused work of supporting learning?
A few possibilities emerge:
- Narrative Evaluation: Provides a written account of a student’s journey, highlighting strengths, areas for improvement, and pathways forward. It offers a clear alternative to grades by telling the story of learning. However, this can also be seen as only being provided when an assessment has been submitted.
- Learning Dialogue: Emphasises the relational and conversational nature of feedback, positioning educator and student as partners in meaning-making.
- Formative Practice: Highlights the ongoing, non-final nature of this work, situating it as practice for mastery rather than a verdict.
- Learning Noticing: Borrowed from teacher education, where “noticing” is central to observing student growth, this term foregrounds attentiveness rather than judgment.
None of these terms is perfect. But perhaps that’s the point… By questioning our language, we surface the limits of our current vocabulary in learning. If assessment inevitably pulls us towards grades and judgments, then maybe experimenting with new terms helps us reimagine what it means to support learning.
Why the Distinction Matters
Whether we call it assessing, narrative evaluation, or something else, the point is clear: learning involves more than just assessment and producing products; it focuses on learning and processes. Assessment records achievement. Assessing, or its alternatives, fosters growth.
When assessment dominates, students may see education as a game of compliance and performance. They learn to chase marks rather than ideas. When assessing takes its place alongside assessment, students are invited to reflect, to take risks, and to see their learning as an ongoing story.
Holding Both in Balance
Both assessment and assessing matter. Universities require assessment for accountability, progression, and standards. But students need processes like assessing, dialogue, or narrative evaluation if they are to grow, explore, and improve.
The real challenge for educators is balance:
- Designing assessments that are fair, authentic, and transparent.
- Building in space for assessing as an ongoing dialogue.
- Remembering that while assessment records, assessing nurtures.
Ultimately, assessment is the what. Assessing, or perhaps narrative evaluation, learning dialogue, formative practice, or even learning noticing, is the how. None of these terms are perfect, but the conversation about language matters. It serves as a reminder that how we describe learning influences how we design for it.
Reflection Questions
· When you hear the word assessment, what comes to mind first? Grades, standards, or learning?
· Do you consciously make space for assessing (the process of feedback and growth) in your own teaching practice?
· Which alternative term resonates most with you, and why? Is it narrative evaluation, learning dialogue, formative practice, learning noticing, or something else?
· How might your students’ experience change if you reframed part of your unit from assessment to assessingor narrative evaluation?
· What small shift could you make in your next unit design to better balance the product (assessment) with the process (assessing)?
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