Programme approaches to assessment are a challenging yet essential part of higher education (Jessop et al, 2014; O’Neill, 2015). Continuous Assessment has fully or partially replaced end-of-semester exams in almost all programmes, the literature providing support for its effectiveness in delivering longer term student learning (Falchikov, 2013, Brown & Knight, 1994). Research shows that students prefer continuous assessment, most achieving higher grades through what they perceive to be a fairer mode of assessment than traditional examinations (Holmes, 2015;Trotter, 2006; Isaksson, 2008). However, the increased use of continuous assessment can result in over assessment enslaving, rather than saving students and lecturers alike. One response to this challenge is the development of programme assessment schedules. Primarily intended to assist students in managing both their time and their anxiety levels, by preventing the clustering of assessments, this macro view of assessment across the stages of a programme also raises lecturer awareness of the frequency, volume and variety of student assessments.
This paper outlines the use of the Programme Assessment Schedule for Students (PASS), an online calendar-based mapping tool designed to capture the types and timings of assessments across modules in each year of a programme. A single version of the PASS schedule providing an overview of assessment dates and formats is completed by all teaching staff at the start of the semester and then shared with students. PASS can be viewed through two lenses: a zoom lens for the modules and year, and a wide-angle lens for the programme overview.
However, more recently, as technology has become increasingly embedded in practice, the issue of the diversity of tools being used for assessment has emerged. The technology which assists in the collection, grading and originality checking of submitted work can result in an additional workload and be a source of anxiety for students unfamiliar with features used. This has necessitated the addition into the PASS schedule of columns detailing the assessment submission methods and the technologies employed. In this way, the schedule makes explicit the alignment between the technology tools employed and the learning and assessment process.
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Topics: Assessment and feedback in a digital age , Topics: Learning analytics: research and practice
