Table 2 provides a summary list of the alternative modes of assessment discussed in the main content. Key strengths and weaknesses are detailed briefly.
Table 2 Alternative assessment techniques and their relative merits
|Method of assessment||Meaning and skill areas developed|
|Group assessment||This develops interpersonal skills and may also develop oral skills and research skills (if combined, for example, with a project).|
|Self-assessment||Self-assessment obliges students more actively and formally to evaluate themselves and may develop self-awareness and better understanding of learning outcomes.|
|Peer assessment||By overseeing and evaluating other students’ work, the process of peer assessment develops heightened awareness of what is expected of students in their learning.|
|Unseen examination||This is the ‘traditional’ approach. It tests the individual knowledge base but questions are often relatively predictable and, in assessment, it is difficult to distinguish between surface learning and deep learning.|
|Testing skills instead of knowledge||It can be useful to test students on questions relating to material with which they have no familiarity. This often involves creating hypothetical scenarios. It can test true student ability and avoids problems of rote- and surface-learning.|
|Coursework essays||A relatively traditional approach that allows students to explore a topic in greater depth but can be open to plagiarism. Also, it can be fairly time consuming and may detract from other areas of the module.|
|Oral examination||With an oral exam, it is possible to ascertain students’ knowledge and skills. It obliges a much deeper and extensive learning experience, and develops oral and presentational skills.|
|Projects||These may develop a wide range of expertise, including research, IT and organisational skills. Marking can be difficult, so one should consider oral presentation.|
|Presentations||These test and develop important oral communication and IT skills, but can prove to be dull and unpopular with students who do not want to listen to their peers, but want instead to be taught by the tutor.|
|Multiple choice||These are useful for self-assessment and easy to mark. Difficulties lie in designing questions and testing depth of analytical understanding|
|Portfolio||This contains great potential for developing and demonstrating transferable skills as an ongoing process throughout the degree programme.|
|Computer-aided||Computers are usually used with multiple-choice questions. Creating questions is time consuming, but marking is very fast and accurate. The challenge is to test the depth of learning.|
|Literature reviews||These are popular at later levels of degree programmes, allowing students to explore a particular topic in considerable depth. They can also develop a wide range of useful study and research skills.|
Employers are increasingly looking for the ability to work in and direct a team as a key graduate skill. Flexible work patterns and increased dependence on central IT systems are driving this agenda. Nevertheless, assessment in HE continues to relate to activities that students undertake individually. This is perhaps unsurprising, since academics tend not to have much recent direct experience of working in industry and commerce.
It is relatively easy to visualise the benefits of group projects. Apart from the obvious one (enhancement of interpersonal skills), these activities can be readily combined with other key learning objectives. Groups may, for example, prepare projects and present results orally, in the process developing research and oral skills.
The implications of group work for staff time are difficult to assess. There are potential savings in marking, as a project of, say, three individuals may be less time-consuming than three individual projects. However, much depends on how students disseminate their work, and this approach to assessment needs a high(er) level of supervision.
The major challenge in implementing assessment by group work is how to supervise individual contributions and award grades that fairly represent individual effort. In group work, individuals may have some incentive to free-ride and better students in poorly motivated groups may be discouraged. Top Tips 2 suggests some examples of group work in economics and gives hints on how to resolve the problems.
For example, consider random selection of individuals to groups. In this way, students must develop relationships with their colleagues with whom they are unfamiliar and whom they may not actually like, in the process developing essential interpersonal skills. Typically, the group task is a type of project on which students work over the duration of the module and it involves some research. As with all kinds of assessment, one has to be careful to define the tasks and expected outcomes in a way that promotes deep learning.
Groups are no less likely to engage in superficial learning than individuals and there is always a danger that instructors focus too heavily on the dynamics of the group and the development of interpersonal skills at the expense of deep learning.6
Consider requiring students to submit a short report that discusses their initial meetings, attendance, how the project will proceed and who is to take responsibility for what.
Students are likely to meet anyway, but the written report will motivate the group to organise and discuss amongst themselves the best way forward, and it gives some basis for measuring individual contributions.
As with all forms of assessment, the criteria for assessment should be explicit. Often, it is appropriate for groups to disseminate their work in the form of a group presentation to which all individuals contribute, although it may be better to request a supplementary short report, and thereafter communicate to students what is expected in a presentation.
Apart from enhancing various skills related to presentation, oral delivery can make it easier to evaluate and grade individual contributions and the depth of learning involved. Careful consideration should be given to the allocation of marks, allowing sufficient flexibility to reward individual efforts adequately. One way is to allocate individuals both a group and an individual mark, although the proportion of the final mark should weight the group performance more heavily so as to encourage a collective effort.
As with all innovations, consideration must be given to whether group work complements other core learning objectives or whether it draws scarce student and staff resources from other key teaching and learning processes. On the positive side, group work may be combined with other valuable activities, such as a project or a piece of research, and may culminate in a presentation. This may be a valuable learning exercise in its own right. On the other hand, there is a danger that group work induces students to specialise too heavily on one area or topic at the expense of other aspects of the module. Here are two ways of limiting the extent of this problem:
The resource implications may or may not involve additional staff obligations. Group work is probably not appropriate for large modules delivered by only one tutor. On the other hand, there are likely to be many scale economies resulting from large-group assessment by a team of tutors.
For example, there are innovative ways of allocating individual marks that take account of the group’s inside knowledge of the relative contributions of each individual. This can work a lot better than may be expected. The group is awarded a group mark that they must divide amongst themselves. For example, a group of four students with 240 marks may choose to share these equally – 60 marks each. Alternatively, they may allocate more marks to the strongest contributions.
It may be surprising that there is evidence to suggest that students are willing to allocate marks in a way that reflects their relative engagement in the project (even if it is to their detriment). It is useful for tutors to insist on a written report explaining the rationale for the marks that have been allocated.
Some tips for allocating group-marked projects are contained in Top Tips 3.
The basic idea behind self- and peer assessment is to provide mechanisms that help students to evaluate themselves and their work more critically. An ability to assess one’s own strengths and weaknesses is an essential life-skill that facilitates personal development whether in study or in the workplace.
Readers should note, in the following suggestions, that students are not involved in final marking. There is always the danger that where the assessment does not contribute to their final mark, they may not take it as seriously as desired.
The rationale for peer assessment has been summarised by Boud (1986): ‘Students have an opportunity to observe their peers throughout the learning process and often have a more detailed knowledge of the work of others than do their teachers.’ Brown and Dove (1991) also argue that well-designed peer and self-assessment can produce the advantages listed in Box 5.
More recent research has provided some support for these arguments (Searby and Ewers, 1997; MacAlpine, 1999), and these ideas are summarised in Top Tips 4.
For example, a common approach is to provide students with a self-assessment form. This contains a series of questions and issues that encourage students to evaluate critically the quality of their work, and it should correspond closely with the criteria that the learning facilitator used when assessing the work. For example, self-assessment forms may ask the student whether the work has a clear structure; whether it has reviewed the existing literature adequately; whether references are properly recorded, and so on.
Box 6 details some general questions that might be put on an assessment form. Other questions should be specific to the particular task at hand. Asking themselves these questions and submitting substantive written answers requires students to supply a more honest appraisal that should feed back into modifying and improving their work. The completed form is not of great value in itself – it is the process that it induces that is important.
In peer assessment, coursework is usually exchanged between students who use similar forms to comment on the work of their colleagues. Lecturers may then ask for a supplementary submission that reports on how students have acted upon the comments of their peers. Note that student peer assessment should be anonymous, with assessors randomly chosen so that friendship cannot influence the process.
There is a danger that self- and peer assessment degenerates into a superficial process, since much depends upon whether students understand the purpose and their willingness to participate. It is easy to imagine students completing self-assessment forms simply through obligation, having completed the coursework and with no intention of revising the work in light of any weaknesses they uncover. However, equally, self-assessment can be a support to students – well-thought-out forms help to clarify what is expected of students and can form a natural basis for educators’ final comments and feedback.
As regards resource costs, self-assessment is unlikely to save time. It takes time to initiate the process and design a good-quality assessment form. It also takes time to educate the students to complete it well, and to give feedback after they have completed and submitted their assessment form. Of course, it is also time-consuming for students who may already be overloaded with assessment. The benefits of the process to the educator should take the form of better student performance in the final examination.7
Many student activities that are traditionally examined through written reports or essays may alternatively be examined orally in the form of a viva. Potentially, this approach can give a much clearer idea of the depth of students’ understanding. There is no scope for plagiarism, and little scope for regurgitation of material, at least in carefully managed interviews. There are also benefits in terms of development of interpersonal skills and interview technique.
The time costs should not be severe – there is no marking, although the assessor must see each student individually and this is a logistical problem, especially for large groups. One has to think carefully about the questions asked (with different questions to prevent student collusion). Oral examination can be a risky approach, since validation by external review may be complex and there is likely to be some student resistance. Certainly, an assessor will have to write reports on each student’s performance, detailing the questions asked and the basis for assessment.
The approach is definitely worth thinking about however, and should perhaps be tried out on a small scale as a complement to a more traditional assessment such as an exam – say, allocate 30 per cent of the final mark to the oral examination, reducing the requirements of the exam accordingly.
As another example, suppose students are told to attend a 15-minute viva in which they will be examined on the economics of the East Asian financial crisis of 1997. The lecturer has prepared a bank of questions to ask students that relate not only to students’ knowledge, but also to the process they undertook in preparing for the examination. Some questions can be narrow, to test their basic knowledge, whilst others can be broader and more searching, viz.:
If well prepared, the oral examination allows the instructor to investigate students’ knowledge, skills and commitment in a way that is often impossible in written unseen examinations. It also requires them to read and research much more extensively. On the negative side, there is the ‘stress factor’ of undergoing live interrogation.
With regard to resource costs, this approach need not involve much additional staff time, since it saves on the laborious marking of written scripts. It is of course, time-consuming to initiate, although future years should benefit as both experience and the assessment bank are built up.
One of the problems with unseen exams is that questions are so closely related to the material covered in the course and in the textbook that students tend to memorise and regurgitate without any deep understanding. An alternative approach involves testing students with questions relating to issues or material that is not familiar, but which does require the kind of approach to problem solving that is developed in the module. In this way, the assessor is testing the learning process developed in the course rather than the knowledge provided.
As an example, students are asked to answer ten questions in 40 minutes. Each question is worth 3 marks. The right is reserved to give negative scores for logically wrong answers and bonus points for excellent answers.
Imagine you are an economics adviser starting an assignment in an unfamiliar society. Please summarise your approach to the following issues in up to three points (the points do not have to be in any order of significance).
Here are four of the ten exemplar questions.
Presentations are a well-established method of assessment. They help to develop skills required in the workplace, as well as student confidence, oral skills and the use of relevant software. However, it is true that use of presentations in HE is often felt to be inadequate. Students may regurgitate material without properly engaging the audience, and may invest a lot of time in their own presentation at the expense of other work. For example, students seldom prepare for the topics covered by their colleagues’ presentations. Top Tips 6 contains a couple of useful tips to improve the efficacy of presentations.
With projects, students are often free to choose the topic, title and methodology to be studied. Projects are useful in developing independence, organisational skills, resourcefulness and a sense of ownership over work, and may induce a deeper level of learning.
On the other hand, they may be unpopular and where the project is an option, take-up may be low. Students may believe that it involves a greater amount of work than a standard module and/or that there will be insufficient supervision. Some tips for improving the take-up rate and usefulness of project work are listed in Top Tips 7.
Consider asking students to prepare a literature review on a given topic. This develops a number of research-type skills, encouraging students to source material, use search engines and be able to assimilate large amounts of material and select the most important.
While students are often expected to review literature as a matter of course (for example, as part of an essay submission), they normally underperform, being overly reliant on key ideas presented to them in core textbooks. This approach encourages them to do it, makes plagiarism more difficult and can be quite popular, since the process of searching and understanding a wider literature makes students feel more involved.
Article reviews involve students presenting in written or oral format a critique of one or more articles. However, this approach can be somewhat demanding for undergraduates.
As an example, we could pose the question whether the UK should join the common European currency or not. Students should submit a comprehensive literature review on this controversial topic. They are expected to source a range of material and arguments relating to this debate, and prepare a report referring to the original sources.
Literature reviews are probably easier to read than other types of written work, which therefore eases the burden of marking.
Table 3 Types of multiple-choice question
Given the disadvantages listed in Box 9, these types of question should not be used as the sole means of assessing student performance in a given module.
Computer-aided assessment is discussed in another chapter in this handbook. But for now, consider that computer software such as Question Mark can be used to format multiple-choice questions and mark and analyse the results. It may be time-consuming to set, but marking is very fast and accurate. However, as with other objective tests, it is difficult to test the depth of learning.
A portfolio is a collection of work commonly used in the assessment of vocational training (such as industrial placement).
Portfolios may not be an ideal way of testing knowledge and the analytical, conceptual and problem-solving skills required in economics. Also it does not fit readily within a modular structure. However, there is clear potential for portfolios in the development of transferable skills – a requirement of degree programmes can be the demonstration of various activities and skills, such as leadership, co-ordination and research. This could easily be embodied within a portfolio submitted at the final level.
As an ongoing means of assessment, portfolios would be a useful device for indicating the importance of transferable skills, and requiring students, rather than lecturers, to find ways of developing these skills. Traditionally, students have used extra-curricular activities to demonstrate their range of personal and interpersonal skills, which are summarised and publicised in curriculum vitae.
For much more detail on portfolios and a case study, see Baume (2001) and Coates (2000).
There are many other methods of assessment besides those discussed above – poster sessions, open-book examinations, seen-examinations, profiles, single-essay examinations and various combinations of the above. For more detail, consult section 4.
One of the major principles of good assessment practice is that the criteria are clearly communicated to the students. This allows the educator to fashion better the learning process and induce desirable learning outcomes. From the point of view of the student, explicit communication of criteria is desirable as it allows them to focus on what they should be doing.
Typically, economics students are provided with a rather stylised description of the characteristics and qualities that constitute the respective grade levels (often at the beginning of their studies in the student handbook). A first-class mark is awarded for outstanding performance containing original thought; a 2.2 grade is characterised by sound understanding and presentation of key concepts but with a number of lapses in argument, and so on. The criteria are rather broad and abstract in nature, and reflect, in part, a preference for developing intellectual and analytical skills.
In this section, the ways in which alternative assessment criteria may be used to promote the development of transferable skills in ‘traditional’ student activities are discussed. An example is provided of how a piece of written coursework may be used to develop core IT skills. Students are required to submit an essay related to a broad issue or question in economics and are told beforehand that 50 per cent of the mark will be allocated on the basis of the use of IT skills.
The following example is adapted from Brown et al. (1994, p. 17).
Students are required to add an appendix to their submission explaining the uses made of IT. Where it is not obvious (for example, search engines or statistical packages), students must provide comprehensive evidence of their use.
The following sheet (Table 4) can be completed to form a basis for allocating marks in respect of IT use. The assessor ticks the boxes as appropriate.
Table 4 Indicator of IT use
|None, limited or extensive||Simple or sophisticated||Appropriate or inappropriate|
|Layout and formatting|
|Use of other software, e.g. Equation Editor|
|Use of statistical and econometric packages|
|Use of software for searching literature|