By Andrew Sabaratnam. First published Feb 2000

1. Introduction

Assessment of student achievement is changing, largely because today’s students face a world that will demand new knowledge and abilities. In the global economy of the 21st century, students will not only need to understand the basics, but also to think critically, to analyse, and to make inferences. Helping students develop these skills will require changes in assessment at the NgeeAnn and department level.

Many of us believe that what gets assessed is what gets taught and that the format of assessment influences the format of instruction. Contrary to our understanding of how students learn, many assessments test facts and skills in isolation, seldom requiring students to apply what they know and can do in real-life situations. Standardised tests do not match the emerging content standards, and over-reliance on this type of assessment often leads to instruction that stresses basic knowledge and skills. Rather than encouraging changes in instruction toward the engaged learning that will prepare students for the 21st century, these tests encourage instruction of less important skills and passive learning. Although basic skills may be important goals of education, they are often over-emphasised in an effort to raise standardised test scores.

However, many of us are beginning to recognise that basics are no longer sufficient and are calling for a closer match between the skills students learn in the polytechnic and the skills they will need upon leaving the polytechnic. Shouldn’t we be expected to help students develop skills and competencies in real-life, “authentic” situations, and graduate students who can demonstrate these abilities? If this be the case, then shouldn’t we consider alternative forms of assessment, in addition to the traditional examination?

Last year, I attended the 4th Conference on Assessment at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle (31 August - 3 September 99). I would like to share some knowledge I gathered from Professor Phil Race, who conducted a workshop in the conference. It is hoped that this will help you explore further methods of assessment in your modules.

(Phil Race is Emeritus Professor of Glamorgan University. He is currently working part-time at Durham University as Programme Director of the ‘Durham Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education’. He has worked in Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand and has co-authored many books on assessment.)

2. Traditional Examinations

Traditional, unseen, written exams still make up a major share of assessment in higher education. It causes students to be engage deliberately with the subject matter being covered by the exams, and these exams are demonstrably fair in that students have all the same tasks to do in the same way and within the same timescale.

However, much has been written about the weaknesses of such exams:

1. Students get little or no feedback about their performance in the exams. Some may argue that the purpose of such exams is measurement rather than feedback, but the counter-argument is that most exams represent lost learning opportunities because of this lack of feedback.
2. Exams do not do much to increase students’ motivation in terms of their desire to learn. Exams tend to measure how good students are at answering exam questions, rather than how well they have learned.
3. Exams usually force students into surface learning, with students clearing their minds of one subject as they prepare for exams in the next subject.
4. How students perform in traditional exams depends on so many factors other than their grasp of the subject being tested. Students’ state of mind on the day, their luck or otherwise in tackling a good question first, their state of health and many other irrelevant factors creep in. Also, exams tend to favour candidates who happen to be skilled at doing exams rather than at anything more important. If we look at exactly what skills are measured by unseen exams, the most important of these from a students’ point of view turns out unsurprisingly to be the techniques needed to do unseen written exams! Unseen examinations are limited and useless for measuring teamwork, leadership and are rarely a suitable vehicle for measuring creativity and lateral thinking.
5. Finally, examination scripts are usually marked far too quickly. Most staff who mark exams agree that the task usually has to be completed in haste, in preparation for timetabled examination meetings. This leads to increased danger that the assessment is not reliable.

3. Other Forms Of Assessment

Below are other forms of assessment that are available to us other than the unseen written exams. While a lot more can be said about each type of assessment, I have shortened it to a brief description with one advantage and one disadvantage.

Open-book exams

Open-book exams are similar to traditional exams, but with the major difference the students are allowed to take in with them sources of reference material. Sometimes, in addition, the ‘timed’ element is relaxed or abandoned, allowing students to answer questions with the aid of their chosen materials and at their own pace.

Advantage - measures retrieval skills - it is possible to set questions which measure how well students can use and apply information, and how well they can find their way round the contents of books and even databases.
Disadvantage - It is hard to ensure that all students are equally equipped regarding the books they bring into the exam with them.

Structured exams

These include multiple-choice exams and several other types of formats where students are not required to write ‘full’ answers, but are involved in making true/false decisions, or identifying reasons to support assertions, or fill in blanks or complete statements, and so on.

Advantage - It is possible, in a limited time, to test students’ understanding of a much greater cross-section of a syllabus than could be done in the same time by getting students to write in detail about a few parts of the syllabus.
Disadvantage - It is harder to design good multiple-choice questions than it is to write traditional open-ended questions.

Essays

Traditional (and open-book) exams often require students to write essays.

Advantage - Writing freely about a topic is a process which demonstrates understanding and grasp of the material involved.
Disadvantage - students from some backgrounds are disadvantaged regarding essay writing skills as they have never been coached in how to write essays well.

Reviews

Getting students to write reviews is a logical way of causing them to interact in depth with the information they review.

Advantage - Reviewing material gives students a task to do which focuses their thinking, and helps them avoid reading passively
Disadvantage - With large numbers of students and limited library resources, students may find it difficult or impossible to get adequate access to the materials we want them to review. However, the Internet may now be an alternate source.

Reports

These make up at least part of the coursework component of many courses.

Advantage - In many careers and professions, the ability to put together a convincing and precise report is useful.
Disadvantage - Collaboration can be difficult to detect. It is not always easy to devise new and different tasks for students to do, so there may be a black market in old reports.

Practical work

Many areas of study involve practical work, but often much more difficult to assess such work in its own right.
Advantage - Practical work is learning by doing.
Disadvantage - It is usually much easier to assess the end point of practical work, rather than the processes and skills involved in their own right.

Portfolios

These are compilations of evidence of students’ achievements, including major pieces of their work, feedback comments from tutors, and reflective analyses by the students themselves.

Advantage - Most other forms of assessment are more like snapshots of particular levels of development, whereas portfolios can demonstrate progression.
Disadvantage - It can take a long time to assess a set of portfolios.

Presentations

This requires substantially different skills from writing answers to exam questions.

Advantage - Presentations can allow you to assess students’ Key Skills. These include oral communication, the ability to plan and structure material, and perhaps working as a member of the team.
Disadvantage - Presentations cannot be anonymous and so it can prove difficult to eliminate subjective bias.

Vivas

These normally take the form of interviews or oral examinations, where students are interrogated about selected parts of work they have had assessed in other ways.

Advantage - They can be useful as a means of allowing students to clarify issues in their work that the examiner finds problematic.
Disadvantage - Cultural and individual differences can result in some candidates underperforming when asked questions by experts and figures of authority.

4. Peer Assessment

Students learn a great deal from each other, and with large student numbers, the importance of student feedback increases as the availability of tutor feedback decreases. Setting up and facilitating student peer-assessment can provide students with deep learning experiences as well as a wealth of feedback to evaluate. Such assessment also equips the students for the rest of the career with well-developed self-evaluation and self-appraisal skills.

Some Reasons for Using Peer Assessment

1. Students are already doing it by comparing their performances and coursework with others.
2. Students find out more about assessment cultures and students gain a better idea of exactly what will be expected of them in their efforts to demonstrate their achievement of the intended learning outcomes.
3. We cannot do as much assessing as we used to do, and so, peer-assessment, when facilitated well, can be a vehicle for getting much more feedback to students.
4. Students learn more deeply when they have a sense of ownership of the agenda.
5. Applying criteria to someone else’s work is one of the most productive ways of developing and deepening understanding of the subject matter involved in the process.
6. Peer-assessment allows students to learn from each other’s successes.
7. Peer-assessment allows students to learn from each other’s weaknesses.

The following are some of the many areas where peer-assessment can produce excellent benefits:

• student presentations,
• reports,
• essay-plans,
• calculations,
• interviews, etc.

5. Conclusion

None of the forms of assessment explored is without merits or limitations. The challenges caused by greater numbers of students and increased assessment workloads provide an opportunity to make a radical review of the ways we assess our students. Probably the best way to do our students justice is to use as wide as possible a mixture of the assessment methods outlined above, allowing students a range of processes through which to demonstrate their respective strengths and weaknesses.

Moreover, we need to ensure that learning is not simply assessment-driven. So, when planning for a greater weightage in continuous assessment, ensure that the assessment practices you choose point to ways of balancing assessment so that it enhances and enriches students’ learning experience, as well as leading to qualifications that are valid and appropriate for their future lives and careers. Zero defects in education can become a reality, if only we assess innovatively.

6. Suggested Reading

The suggestions for further reading below refer to a range of books on assessment, but the list is not meant to be exhaustive.

• Brown, S and Knight, P (1994) Assessing Learners in Higher Education Kogan Page, London.
• Brown, S Race, P and Smith, B (1996) 500 Tips on Assessment Kogan Page, London.
• Rust, R and Wallace, J (1994) Helping Students to Learn From Each Other SEDA Paper 86, Birmingham, UK.
• Brown, S, Rust, C and Gibbs, G (1994) Strategies for Diversifying Assessment in Higher Education Oxford Centre for Staff Development, Oxford Brookes University, UK.
• Race, P Brown, S (1998) The Lecturer’s Toolkit Kogan Page, London.

Author

Andrew Sabaratnam is Deputy Head of Electronic and Computer Engineering Department and was previously the Head of the Academic Quality Section, Institutional Planning & Development Directorate at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.