Developing Millers Pyramid to Support Students’ Assessment Literacy

Assessment literacy is increasingly recognised as an important concept to consider when developing assessment strategies for courses and programmes. Assessment literacy approaches support students in their understanding of assessment expectations and help them both understand and optimise their performance in assessment. In this teaching tip, a model for assessment literacy that builds on the well-known Millers pyramid model for assessment in clinical disciplines is proposed and contextualised. The model progresses thinking from assessment methods themselves to consideration of the activities that need to be built into curricula to ensure that assessment literacy is addressed at each level of the pyramid. The teaching tip provides specific examples at each of the levels. Finally, the relevance of this work to overall curriculum design is emphasised.