Innovation in Assessment?

1. Innovation in Assessment? • Why? • Poor student feedback regarding feedback timeliness and usefulness • Staff workloads • Student lack of awareness as to what constitutes feedback • How? • Some approaches tried and tested • We do not have all the answers!!!

2. BUE traditional approaches • Coursework • Reports • Essays • Maths based questions • Group or Individual • Formal examinations • Closed book • Open book • Presentations • Oral • Posters • Good range seen as a positive by students and colleagues in other Schools

3. Innovations in Assessment Why, How and When?

4. Why? • Aims • To improve learning from the assessment process • To engage students further • To improve student performance • To improve retention (hopefully) • To improve student feedback (NSS)

5. How? • The traditional methods of assessment are tried and tested • External Examiners are comfortable with them • Students are comfortable with them • Staff are comfortable with them • BUT

6. Could the methods we use be: • Tweaked • More balanced • Varied • How can these approaches achieve the aims that innovative forms of assessment seek to achieve?

7. BUE Examples • Seen closed book examinations • Students are given the question a week before • Focuses research and promotes further reading • Discourages plagiarism

8. BUE Examples • Changing the brief of a project • Students work on a project all year with a given brief • Submit project as a group • Given a change to the brief and an afternoon to formulate changes to proposal • Simulates working under pressure and ensures all group members contribute

9. BUE Examples • Using Classroom Performance System • Students revise for examination • Use CPS in revision class • Questions multiple choice but related to exam questions • Results count 5% to module mark • Enjoyable and helps students identify weaknesses before the examination

10. BUE Examples • Non issue of coursework brief until all lectures complete • Essay titles issued randomly in week 12 • Students have Christmas break to undertake the work • Level 1 module- encourages full attendance to the lectures and keeps students engaged over break period

11. BUE Examples • In class assessment with a break for group discussion • Given a design brief, and 2 hours to sketch and explain their solution • Then 30 minutes discussion in groups of 6 – 8 students • Followed by 30 minutes reflection on what they would or would not change in the light of the discussion

12. BUE Examples • Assessed question and answer session after presentations (40%) • The students pay a lot of attention to each others presentations • Helps to identify any errors in the presentations • Has been tried successfully in classes of up to 50 students

13. BUE Examples • Give students a great deal of choice of subject matter • ‘write about something which interests you in the field of….’ • They research more when interested • And also learn about a lot of other subjects while trying to choose!

14. BUE Examples • People from industry come in to help assess oral or poster presentations • Students respond well, and put in extra effort • Industrialists can be very good at pointing out the practicalities to students • But they can be hopeless at marking!

15. When? • Should be introduced in either level 1 or level 2 with relatively low weighting • Not introduced at level 3 where marks count most • Summative or formative but more engagement if summative • CPS good for formative

16. Student Views • Very varied! • When students from one course were asked which assessment they had enjoyed most – almost every assessment was given as an answer, and very few students chose the same assessment

17. What type of assessment is most fair?

18. What do you learn through writing assignments? • New material • How to structure an argument • Develop skills in interpretation • Making contacts (at work for part time students) • How to search for material for as legislation

19. What do you learn through writing assignments? • I’ve learnt more where there has been greater flexibility within the question • I’m more likely to remember the detail if I’ve done the extra reading • I learn more about a subject by looking from more than one angle

20. What do you learn through studying for exams? • Extend knowledge of a subject • Short term learning • Not much • Facts but less theory • How to produce a short report quickly • Thinking on ones feet • Reinforces knowledge already learnt • A crucial part of my learning experience • Exams are necessary to move information into long term memory

21. Multiple Choice Exams • Too restrictive • There is a way of finding answers without learning much • Very easy and don’t need much revision • Less able to assess knowledge and understanding • If negative marking is included can be fair • Useful for calculations

22. Ideal exam length • Depends on proportion of marks from exam • Varies from 2 hours to 5 hours • Most either 2 or 3 hours • Don’t like more than one 3 hour exam in a day

23. Conclusion • All innovations need to achieve some or all of the aims of assessment • Students often prefer the traditional methods • Diversity allows for students with all preferences to shine in some areas • Standards still have to be maintained

24. The big issue? • How do these approaches facilitate the provision of timely and useful feedback? • All of them allow a quicker turn round time • Do we move to assessment tools merely to address this issue? • If NSS is used to determine league table position then probably yes.

25. The bigger picture • What we want is successful students with enhanced experiences of JMU. • We need to look at the whole student experience.

26. We need to address all aspects of the student experience Pre-Entry, Induction, Transition Student Success Graduation, Employability, Global Citizenship Student Support, Retention & Achievement Learning, Teaching, Assessment