We’ve been busy again with all things assessment at UCEM. This blog post is to share some of the hard work we’ve put in and builds on my post from June 2022, Student input to assessment design.
It’s been exciting to have senior management not only supporting ideas for change but actually driving it. I was part of an Assessment Steering Group (ASG) which aimed to enhance the assessment experience from a marking and managing the entire process perspective as well as from a student perspective. As professionals in the built environment our students have already been asked to write reports, do calculations and prepare presentation slides or posters but we wanted to broaden this range further to ensure our assessment is as authentic as possible. At the same time, we wanted to improve marking efficiencies. Stakeholders were therefore not only students but also our academic team, assessment supporting teams and management.
Assessment technologies
This was a collaborative effort. We had expert input from our Learning Technology team who set the foundations with what was possible with our existing technologies and what might be possible beyond these. Our VLE is Moodle, we also already use Bongo for video assessment, and Turnitin for coursework submissions. While we use Moodle Quiz for computer marked assessment (CMA) and Moodle Assignment for group work, our Learning Technology team were keen to help us explore the wider range of options available within Moodle.
Assessment types
Our Director for Digital Learning and Engagement proposed a range of assessment types for use on new modules and programmes. This included practical, media-based and computer based assessment, to name but a few. Part of my task was to unpick what these mean in practice and ensure they adhere to UCEM’s existing assessment principles and standards. A first step was to clarify the definitions of these types of assessment and develop a glossary. This assessment glossary will evolve over time as we pilot and fine-tune the new types of assessment but it clarifies type (the what), method (the how), as well as terminology sometimes used to mean one thing by one person and understood as something else by another, such as ‘marking criteria’ and ‘rubric’ or ‘case study’ and ‘scenario’. I have found it invaluable throughout my career to ensure that everyone understands words and terms in the same way, and that different terms are not used to refer to the same thing. By ‘everyone’ I mean colleagues, students and employers.
Assessment load
A next step was to establish the assessment load or the ‘word count equivalencies’ for assessment that is not primarily written (is not an essay, for example). Word count is typically used at higher education institutions in the UK but desktop research revealed that other universities were in the same situation as UCEM – that the number of words was not really relevant for assessment that requires students to design a poster, create a video or produce something as a group. We therefore developed our Assessment load model. This guidance places emphasis on the design of the task to differentiate between weighting and levels of study rather than purely on word count increasing from Level 4 to Level 7.
Artificial Intelligence
An additional output from the ASG was acknowledgement that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a larger role in assessment. It’s actually difficult not to acknowledge this. We are hearing it from colleagues at other HEIs and the role of AI is regularly a topic for discussion at conferences and webinars such as Transforming Assessment (ASCILITE 2023), Connect More 2024 (Jisc 2024), Digital Universities UK 2024 (THE 2024). I worked with colleagues to draw up guidance for students – a policy – on the use of generative AI in their assessment. We based this on desktop research and had agreement from King’s College London to adapt their existing guidance (no date). Thank you to them. To ensure student input to the UCEM version of the guidance we ran a student consultation through the UCEM Learning Experience Student Panel. The students told us the guidance was clear on the whole but they would like more support so as a result we tweaked the guidance and created more resources to help students. We launched this in our Autumn 2024 semester.
Assessment rubric
A final major output from this year’s ASG is the development of new assessment rubric. UCEM has, for the last few years, used standard rubric across levels, with some variations for project work, for example. In the Quality Control team, we have been hearing from academic colleagues and students alike that it is not always easy to interpret the marking grids, and colleagues wanted flexibility for different types of assessment. We also established that the feedback output from Turnitin is lengthy and again, not always easy to use. Working with my QC colleagues Sarah and Adrian, starting with Level 4, we developed a pool of assessment criteria with the idea that academic colleagues would select from the approved pool as relevant to the assignment, for example technical and creative or evaluation and reflection or teamwork. This provides flexibility but maintains quality. We also reduced the number of grades from seven to five to align with the student final grade at the end of their study (1st, 2:1, 2:2, etc.).
We are now getting modules ready for Spring 2025. We will evaluate the changes made to assessment and continue to amend, improve and enhance as we are still very much at the start of this ongoing journey.
References
ASCILITE (2023) ‘Designs for our times: adapting assessment in an AI context’, Transforming Assessment webinar, 5 April, online.
Jisc (2024) Connect More 2024, 8–10 May, online.
King’s College London (no date) ‘Generative AI: student guidance’ [online]. Available at: www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strategy/learning-and-teaching/ai-guidance/student-guidance [accessed 8 May 2024].
Times Higher Education (2024) Digital Universities UK,16–18 April, Exeter University.
Acknowledgement
Photo by Nicolas Solerieu on Unsplash
Sue Lowe | SCMALT, SFHEA | I’m Quality Controller (Digital Education) at the University College of Estate Management. I worked previously at the Open University and studied – online and at a distance – for a Masters in Online & Distance Education.