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Designing Assessment to Improve Physical Sciences Learning

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Contents

Putting assessment into perspective

  1. How important is expertise in the design of assessment?
  2. Values for assessment
  3. Why should we assess?
  4. What are you trying to assess?
  5. How can we tell whether our assessment is working well?

Concerns about assessment

  1. Concerns about exams
  2. Concerns about continuous assessment

Pros and Cons of Fourteen Assessment Techniques  

1. Traditional Exams

  1. Tips on setting physical sciences exam questions
  2. Tips on designing marking schemes
  3. Tips on marking examination scripts
  4. Using exam questions as class exercises

2 Open-book exams

  1. Tips on setting open-book exam questions

3 Open-notes exams

  1. Tips on designing open-notes exam questions

4 Structured exams

  1. Tips for designing multiple-choice exams in physical sciences

5 Essays

  1. Tips on setting and using essay-type questions

6 Reviews and annotated bibliographies

  1. Tips on setting assessed review tasks

7 Reports

  1. Tips on setting assessed report-writing

8 Practical work

  1. Questions and tips for assessing practical work

9 Portfolios

  1. Tips on using and assessing portfolios

10 Presentations

  1. Tips on using assessed presentations

11 Vivas

  1. Tips on using vivas

12 Student projects

  1. Tips on designing student projects

13 Poster-displays and exhibitions

  1. Tips on planning assessed poster-displays and exhibitions

14 Dissertations and theses

  1. Tips on assessing dissertations and theses

Feedback and Assessment

  1. Quality of feedback
  2. Reducing your load: short cuts to good feedback
  3. Keep records carefully…
  4. Reduce your burden…
  5. And when you still find yourself overloaded…
  6. Using computer-generated feedback
  7. Using email and computer conferencing to give students feedback

Involving students in their own assessment

  1. What lends itself to peer-assessment?…
  2. Getting started with peer-assessment…
  3. Using student self-assessment to enhance their learning

Setting up self-assessment tutor dialogues

  1. Some ideas for self-assessment questions

Making the most of learning outcomes

  1. Why use learning outcomes?
  2. Where can learning outcomes be useful to students?
  3. Tips on designing and using learning outcomes

Conclusions  

ISBN 1-903815-00-2    April 2001

Author: Phil Race

Professor Phil Race’s mission is to to improve and enhance the quality of students’ learning, by helping teaching staff to develop their methods and approaches, and by helping students to develop their own learning skills. He is a member of the Institute for Teaching and Learning and an ILT accreditor. He is also a subject reviewer in Education Studies for the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA).