The literature overview highly suggest that effective assessments have clear and

explicit instruction. However, ‘The Nuclear Age’ assessment task lacks clear instructions.

While the assessment states that the task is a multimodal presentation, the task’s does not

provide information of the types of modes that students can/should use in the assessment.

This lack of information will, according to Pellegrino & Wilson (2015, p. 721), negatively

influence students learning as students become uncertain of task requirements. Pearsall

(2018) clarifies, students need clear instruction to guide them towards deeper understanding.

Furthermore, as the literature overview states tasks instruction must be written explicitly and

unambiguously to reduce student error and distress (Foremen & Arthur-Kelly, 2017;

Pellegrino & Wilson, 2015). This task however lacks key instruction detail, such as the

timing of the presentation, the minimum number of sources and focus questions. Focus

questions specifically is crucial as history education is centred around inquiry-based learning.

This lack of detail will negatively impact student as they will be confused and disengaged

due to the uncertainty of tasks requirements (Pearsall, 2018; Bennett, 2011). Clear and

explicit instruction are necessary in creating quality and effective assessment, however, the

lack of detail in this assessment instructions questions its effectiveness.