BILT Student Fellow, Miyambo Kabwe, working on the ‘Agency and Choice in Assessment Design’ project, shares her views on this blog we shared on an assessment allowing students complete choice over the format they submit in..
A lot of students first reaction to being given 100% free rein on the presentation of their assessment would most likely be a mix of nervousness and excitement. For almost all of a student’s time in academia, they are given no agency over the formatting of their assessments and coursework. Therefore, an assessment format like Martin Ould, Sean Lancastle and Mark Graham’s second year ‘Professional Engineering Practice’ unit is very innovative and tests the boundaries of traditional assessments.
I believe one of the greatest benefits that comes out of this style of assessment is giving students is a small peek into their degree being applied in an industrial context. After completing a stall where I talked to around 40 students on whether they feel as if their assessment prepares them for their future, the (slight) majority said no. Most of the reasoning behind this was due to a perceived disjointedness between assessment format in certain units and how the skills acquired from assessments translate to professional or research career paths. As students’ progress through university, it becomes increasingly important for them to hone the transferable skills needed in a professional workplace. This project allows students to develop these transferable skills, such as time management, collaboration, self-regulation.
In response to the ten-minute assessment, I asked a student who is not in faculty of science and engineering what they thought about this concept. Here is a quote of what they said:
“On one hand, it is quite good because it’s quite freeing for students to be able to present their idea in the way they think will best help the lecturers to understand how well they understand the concept. I think a lot of the time like if lecturers only set one type of assignment like essays, some people might just be naturally bad writing essays, therefore will constantly do worse [than other students who are better at writing essays]. If you think that you’re really good at speech delivery, then if you choose to do an oral presentation that might really helped benefit your grades.
On the other hand, for me personally, I think the lack of structure would stress me out a bit too much. I think for me I really like when things are made completely clear on what exactly you have to do with the step-by-step instructions and I think that’s how I get the best grades that I possibly can and sticking with exactly what they’re asking. I also think the fact that there’s a time pressure and you only have 10 minutes of the time or whoever that does put a lot of pressure on it because I think even though 10 minutes is quite reasonable amount of time, you would want to put everything into those 10 minutes, which I think can be quite stressful.”
Overall, despite initial nervousness, I think a lot of students would be able to see the benefit of a piece of coursework being mediated and formatted in a style of their own design. Not only does it benefit students in developing their professional skills, but it fulfils the authentic, inclusive and design for all criteria that assessments aim for.
I am sure that there is apprehension from students on implementing such a strategy: something both I and the student that I asked highlighted was the pressure behind the timed assessment. However, if certain aspects of the strategy were implemented in different schools and were specialised for a specific unit: such difference in time, a bit more restriction on type of assessment and consistent enforcement of ILOs, I believe it could allow more space for conversations on agency, or possibly levels of agency, that students want to receive in their assessments and help them become confident graduates.
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