Key Assessment Strategy principles: Holistic design, ILO alignment, progressive, ongoing and developmental, sequenced and connected, shared and balanced, inclusivity embedded, range of assessments, clear assessments and criteria, opportunities to apply learning, produced for a wider audience, collaboration and feedback, creativity and agency, has value beyond the classroom
What is the assessment approach?
Throughout the Integrated Masters in Innovation, students are assessed on their ability to collaborate in teams – indeed, programme staff use this term, rather than groups, to capture the idea of students working together with a collective purpose to create a shared output.
How is this approach different? What are some of the design features?
Specific approaches to team assessment change as students move through the programme. While in Year 1, students are grouped to promote gender and disciplinary diversity, Year 2 students are asked to fill in a survey about their values – for example, are they grade-driven or motivated more by social outcomes – so that these can be used as the basis for team formation. In later years, students are given more autonomy over how they are grouped.
“It’s come out of our learning around team cohesion. If students are more aligned around values, we think they’ll work better together as team.”
– Dave Jarman
Students are graded on their team output, although teamworking skills are also an explicit part of the marking criteria. The objective is for students not simply to work in interdisciplinary ways, but also to learn skills to work with others and produce outputs with them.
Students are often required to submit an individual reflection alongside their group output. The aim of this is to encourage them to consider what it means to be a good team member, so that they can apply this knowledge in the real world. It can also help understand and measure their individual contribution.
“When I look at other programmes, here and elsewhere, and I see teamwork happening, I don’t always see an explanation as to what good teamwork might look like. It’s like, ‘I’ll put you in a group and you can work as a group. We haven’t explained what that could look like. We haven’t debriefed you on what happened and whether you enjoyed it, or whether it was good.’”
– Dave Jarman
The concept of equity share is also critical to team assessment on the programme. It asks students to suggest what their contribution will be to the team’s output. This is then monitored and agreed throughout the project and can influence each student’s final grade. If the team agree that their contributions have been equal, all members receive the same grade. If the consensus is that a student has contributed more or less than their share, their mark may go up or down. The extent of the change is determined by an algorithm, kept hidden from students, but also moderated using the marker’s judgement.
“It allows us to get a sense of contribution and individuality within a group, but more important, discuss what contributing to teamwork looks like. Is it putting the hours in or doing the difficult bits? Can you contribute by writing it all up at the end, even if you are barely involved at the start?”
– Dave Jarman
The equity share model relies on communication within each team. This is scaffolded by a system of formative milestones, where team members can review where equity stands, correct their approach if needed, and ensure there is consensus around equity before submission. Staff are also involved in monitoring team members’ participation, both in person and online, to check that they are engaging actively in the project.
What was the rationale for this approach? What problems or challenges was it trying to address?
Since the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship opened, staff have placed teamwork at the heart of students’ learning.
“It was a skill we felt employers sought and alumni needed. When students go out into the workplace, they’ll need to work in teams with people who are not quite like them and get stuff done together.”
– Dave Jarman
It was important that assessment reflected the interdisciplinary nature of the programme.
“We didn’t feel we could set them a group task and then only assess them individually. We needed to assess something that emerged out of their work together as a unit that allowed us to get to the multidisciplinary, the interdisciplinary, even the transdisciplinary or post-disciplinary. It’s been an integral part of what we do right from the outset.”
– Dave Jarman
Over time, assessment has evolved to incorporate different forms of outputs, recognising that diversifying assessment types can promote richer collaboration. When assignments were text-based, students from Arts and Social Science backgrounds tended to dominate; more recent projects, which require students to produce a video, presentation or podcast, or even choose their own output, have led to more authentic examples of teamwork, with individual members taking responsibility for script writing, ideas development or editing. By creating greater scope for collaboration, these more diverse outputs also make it easier for students’ teamworking skills to be assessed.
“I often used to hear comments like, ‘I did the majority of the writing, therefore, I did the majority of the work’. If students are working towards a different output, it becomes a richer conversation in terms of how they have collectively come to that point. It becomes more nuanced – much more than raw hours or number of words.”
– Dave Jarman
Policies around team formation are the product of lessons learned. Originally, staff aimed for an even mix of genders, nationalities and language backgrounds, but this often led to teams with lone female students or just one proficient speaker of English who was asked to translate for their team. Now, the rule is ‘two or more or none at all’.
Equity share is a response to students’ desire to stand out and the need to assess individual contributions within a team.
“We’ve always wanted to give individuals the chance to both shine and potentially be exposed where they are better than or not as good as necessary or on a particular task than the remainder of the group.”
– Dave Jarman
How does this approach reflect the strategic priorities of Integrated Assessment Design, Designed for All and Authentic Assessment?
Integrated Assessment Design
Team assessment is designed holistically across the programme, with opportunities for students to build on their experience as they gain in confidence and team tasks become more open-ended and challenging. Unit learning objectives align with those of the programme, enabling students to become insiders to the ways of thinking and acting in innovation and entrepreneurship.
“Our assessment is less about the output and more about the process. Can you show us an innovative, entrepreneurial process where we could say, if you continued to use that process, you could be confident you would get innovative and entrepreneurial outcomes in the future?”
– Dave Jarman
“I’ll say to my Year 1 students, ‘This is the sixth week in a row I’ve only seen three of you sat round the table. Can I help you have an equity share discussion?’, but they don’t want to cause a fuss – it feels too difficult for them. By the time they get to Year 4, the stakes are higher, they’re more willing to have those conversations and fight for their share. They get better at it over time. They get better at wanting to express it.”
– Daniella Jenkins
Students engage in self-reflection and peer feedback at critical points during their programme and within each unit, in addition to engaging with developmental feedback from the programme team.
Designed for All
Team assessments on the programme are designed to help all students play to their strengths and fulfil the learning outcomes. This is achieved both through opportunities to make different contributions within diverse teams and by experiencing a range of assessment types which enable them to demonstrate learning. Students are supported through project milestones, where they are encouraged to engage in constructive, formative dialogue with tutors and members of their team. Learning outcomes and marking criteria are transparent, with students made aware from the start that teamwork is fundamental to the programme.
“We are quite firm in our view that you can’t innovate unless you can work with other people. If a student discloses that they find teamwork difficult, we’ll support them, and make sure their group feels adequately supported. Students respond well to that, because they’re more likely to say, ‘I find it difficult, but I don’t want to always find it difficult. I want to be able to do it.’”
– Dave Jarman
The Centre believes that good education around teamwork requires scaffolding for students to make the most of the experience. The programme provides models and frameworks for what good and bad teamwork look like as a precursor to and as a reflection on team-based project work. This helps students interrogate what is working and why and learn effectively from it for future projects.
Authentic Assessment
Engaging in team assessment during the programme provides multiple opportunities for students to apply learning to address problems in the real world. It also mirrors professional practice, and therefore has value beyond the classroom.
Students have increased opportunities to exercise their agency in making choices about assessment as they move through the programme. In Year 1, team formation and assessment briefs are decided for them; by Year 4, students are in their own teams, working to their own brief.
