Assessments - Part 2

Assessments in my opinion are meant to measure the learning of concepts/skills delivered/taught in a course.  They are required to measure the breadth and the depth of learning.  They must also be fair and valid to ensure a proper measurement of learning.  Not an easy task!  It takes a concentrated effort to ensure consistency in the development of good assessments.

Some assessments that I have administered that have had a good feedback from students are:

Portfolios

Portfolios are effective means of assessing coursework as they span a longer period of time, allow for students to create and select artifacts as their learning progresses through the course and provides them with the opportunity to reflect on what they have learnt.  I have often used portfolios in my courses.  For example in course like Database Design, a student portfolio would consist of a sample of transaction record that they have normalized, a narrative description of a business process and a set of business rules, an ER diagram etc. The last artefact would be a reflection.    This assessment ensures that students compile their portfolio artefact from their classwork assignments and their independent study and helps them to look back on their work with a sense of accomplishment.  When I do this again, I would have students write a short reflection on each artefact  requiring them to be critical as well as reflective.  Perhaps adding an element of peer review to a portfolio would make help students to improve the quality of what they produce.

Oral Exams or Interviews

Oral exams or interviews are conducted at the end of a group assignment such as a capstone project or the analysis of a business requirement.  Students have had the benefit of working on a project applying concepts that they have learnt to a real life scenario.  Often during such projects, students tend to focus entirely on the problem and its solution and not enough on the skills/concepts/tools and techniques that must be used to analyse, evaluate and design solution.  The latter being the goal of the course.  An oral exam can be designed to evaluate both.  Typically, students are allowed a few minutes to summarize their project in a presentation.  Then each student is asked a specific number of questions.  These questions come from a database of questions relating to the concepts learnt in the course and their application in the project.  This ensures a fair and valid testing of course goals and works well as a final assessment in a course.  They are also less stressful for students that are somewhat weak in writing and prefer to speak about a topic.

The challenges are to design a good rubric and questions relevant to oral examinations.  If this can be defined, Oral exams work well.

Concept Maps

I have never tried using concept maps as an assessment tool - only used it to brainstorm.  But I can see that can be adapted to demonstrate learning of concepts in courses like Systems Analysis.  They can be produced by students as a preparatory task before a quiz or to demonstrate the understanding of a concept.  These could be good memory joggers or review material before the dreaded final comprehensive exam!