THE INDEPENDENT CHAMPIONS EDUCATION
Universities should learn from Covid –and cut down on Exams for good
As universities start to imagine a post-pandemic future, they are faced with a choice –to simply return to the way things were, or embrace this opportunity to change assessment for good.
The coronavirus pandemic gave universities no choice but to radically rethink assessment. Many formal examinations were cancelled and replaced by a greater variety of assessment tasks.
Timed written examinations continue to dominate university assessment. In most professions, the need to recall and write down specific information from memory under timed conditions is rare. Yet every year across the world students are crammed into exam halls to do just that.
Meaningful learning
To manage the challenges created by the shutdown of campuses, many universities reduced the number of assessments students were required to complete. They still made sure that the tasks enabled students to demonstrate their learning against all of the stated learning outcomes. These are the essential expectations for a course as a whole.
In assessment, less can be more. In university courses, tasks that contribute to students’ grades are known as summative assessments. Tasks that focus instead on helping students to learn through practicing key skills and benefiting from feedback are called formative assessments.Research shows that students typically experience eight times as much summative as formative assessment on their courses. By reducing the number of summative assessments, we can instead focus on meaningful learning and formative feedback.
Rethinking examinations
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, many exams have been replaced by coursework tasks or open book examinations. These forms of assessment better represent the ways in which information is synthesised and applied in real life situations. Tasks that represent what graduates are likely to do in the workplace are often called authentic assessment.There are countless ways to assess students’ learning authentically. From learning journals to blog posts, and from podcasts to client reports, students can demonstrate their learning through a wide range of tasks that represent the kinds of activities they will encounter in their future working lives.
Whilst there are often concerns that such forms of assessment are more susceptible to cheating than the conventional examination, research now equips us with strategies to minimise such risks.
Reclaiming feedback
As we think of new ways of assessing our students’ learning, perhaps we can re-establish feedback as important in its own right and not just an afterthought to an assessment task. Examinations often occur at the end of the academic year. This means that if students receive any information at all on their performance, they do not have an opportunity to use it. The neglect of feedback as a learning tool has meant that often comments provided on students’ work merely justify the grade awarded, rather than supporting students to learn how to improve their work in the future. Supporting students’ learning is the true purpose of feedback.
University assessment has resisted change for far too long. This pandemic has forced a large-scale shift in approaches to assessment, not just in terms of how we assess students, but why. Under immensely challenging circumstances, universities have been handed an opportunity to change for good. They should use this opportunity to focus on methods of assessment that put learning first.
