by Janet Cronshaw and Rebecca Barnes
Why do we want to improve assessments?
Assessment and feedback are a vital part of the student experience at university and should be a tool to support student learning as well as measure student progress and achievement. Despite considerable staff efforts in this area, both assessment and feedback tend to score poorly in student surveys (TellUS, NSS).
A curriculum review is currently underway in Biosciences and designing assessments should be integral to this. In recent years, academic reps have highlighted dissatisfaction with assessments in Biosciences, with particular emphasis on the balance of assessment and the number of modules assessed by a single exam. Now seems like the perfect time to integrate student voice into our curriculum design.
Why did we decide to co-work with students on this?
To us as academic staff, there were some clear advantages to co-working with students on this project:
- It was interesting to get a student perspective on the running of this project (not just their opinions on the subject matter). The interns we hired (one GTA and two undergraduates) took the project in ways we might not have done. For example, we were keen to understand opinions on assessment balance and workload; but our interns encouraged us to broaden this to query perceptions of how authentic our assessments are.
- We had a good response rate, which we think was down to the survey being student-led. If run well, a student-led project can reach a wider cohort of respondents.
- Time (maybe?!) The interns freed up some academic time by running the project. This was offset a little by more input being needed for some of the more complex tasks (survey design, data analysis, report writing).
- And there were benefits for the interns too. We secured funding for this project so that they were paid and they now have some valuable experiences for their CV.
Inevitably, there were some downsides and complications to co-working with students:
- It resulted in an extra layer of complication to our project. Some tasks did end up taking longer, simply because there was input from several people and lots of discussion and feedback were required during certain stages, where the interns were less experienced.
- We didn’t get to ask the questions that we wanted to ask! (But maybe this isn’t such a bad thing…).
- Participants believe that they should be judged on skills development and understanding of the material, rather than simple recall of facts (multiple choice questions were particularly unpopular).
- Preparation for assessment, in particular for exams, is very important to the respondents but, unfortunately, our students do not feel well-equipped for some of our assessment types.
- The amount of assessment was not seen as overwhelming but bunching of deadlines and exam dates was highlighted as an issue.
- Many students find modules assessed by a single exam stressful, and there were many requests to diversify module assessments.
- Coursework deadlines have been reviewed as part of an assessment mapping project and moved where possible to ease bunching.
- Exam scheduling is centrally managed, but we have worked to identify where we can make scheduling requests for specific module combinations.
- Review and re-design the Level 2 exam skills workshop.
- Develop clear exam marking criteria where these do not already exist and standardise those that do.
- Generate better guidance for staff on how to prepare students for exams.