The implications of programme assessment patterns for student learning

Abstract

Evidence from 73 programmes in 14 U.K universities sheds light on the typical student experience of assessment over a three-year undergraduate degree. A previous small-scale study in three universities characterised programme assessment environments using a similar method. The current study analyses data about assessment patterns using descriptive statistical methods, drawing on a large sample in a wider range of universities than the original study. Findings demonstrate a wide range of practice across programmes: from 12 summative assessments on one programme to 227 on another; from 87% by examination to none on others. While variations cast doubt on the comparability of U.K degrees, programme assessment patterns are complex. Further analysis distinguishes common assessment patterns across the sample. Typically, students encounter eight times as much summative as formative assessment, a dozen different types of assessment, more than three quarters by coursework. The presence of high summative and low formative assessment diets is likely to compound students' gradeorientation, reinforcing narrow and instrumental approaches to learning. High varieties of assessment are probable contributors to student confusion about goals and standards. Making systematic headway to improve student learning from assessment requires a programmatic and evidence-led approach to design, characterised by dialogue and social practice.

Inspiring a Self-Reliant Learning Culture while Brewing the Next Silicon Valley in North Wales

“…Exposing students to assessment techniques they had not previously encountered, such as group presentations, has been reported to engender anxiety and impair leaners performance through a sense of bemusement and unfairness [11]. Such emotional response was commonly observed during the first milestone group presentations, when some students were fairly new to the exercise.…”

“…Furthermore, the implementation of small group learning has shown large positive impacts on student attitudes towards learning and retention [8] while reducing the emotional stress due to individual examinations. Nevertheless, a number of challenges have also been documented, including the construction of groups from a pool of students with different abilities and background [9]; decrease in members engagement with group size [10]; members anxiety when facing new assessment techniques such as group presentations [11]; evaluation of individual learners versus group performance [12].…”

Considering the concept of recipience in student learning from a modified Bernsteinian perspective

“…This is perhaps why programmatic / synoptic assessment approaches are gaining momentum across the HE sector, as they require programme teams to step outside of the arbitrary fragmentation of the curriculum into modules of assessment and towards the assessment of the overarching aims and learning outcomes or goal knowledge structures of an entire programme (e.g. Heeneman et al, 2015;Jessop & Tomas, 2017; Vleuten et al, 2017).…”

An industry-inspired civil engineering curriculum

“…To address the personal development-based learning outcomes of the Engineering Council, and in the student's future the Institution of Civil Engineers' (ICE) personal skills criteria, the University of Nottingham's Department of Civil Engineering has designed a new programme-level curriculum structure that departs from traditional, subject-specific modularisation (Gibbs and Dunbar-Goddet, 2007;Jessop and Tomas, 2017). Inspiration has been taken from industry approaches to personal development and problem-based tasks (Kyte, 2013), aiming to achieve four goals, to ■ encourage students' understanding in the context of civil engineering as a whole ■ prepare students for a challenging and transient jobs market by embedding professional attributes ■ reduce the amount of assessment and improve its quality ■ ensure that all students have a grounding in the basics, while providing opportunity for excellent students (the industry's future leaders) to be challenged and stretched.…”