Increasingly innovative forms of assessment are being introduced by universities as a substitute for traditional written essays. Below are examples of innovative assessment from across the HE sector. While often innovation is associated with technology, the examples below prove that this is not always the case.
Conference as assessment - the student conference has been a form of assessment at the Psychology Department of the MMU for the last 12 years. It is organised in the same way as any other national conference, including key note speakers but most importantly it's a space for Year 3 students to present their final projects. The presentation is assessed and moderated by three members of staff.
Effective and efficient feedback - to make summative feedback more detailed, the marking criteria and marking grid is broken down into sections with very detailed band descriptions for each section. Students receive a mark for each section with an overall comment. The marking criteria can be accessed via Moodle. Students can identify areas of strength and areas for improvement.
Presenting to industry panellists - in order to create a greater link to employability, one of the assessments on the Engineering course included a presentation to industry panellists. The experience was very valuable to students as they had an opportunity to receive feedback from the professionals as well as academics.
Working with life clients on authentic tasks – part of the assessment diet on a Manufacturing M.A course is group work on authentic tasks from clients. Each group prepares a full report, a poster, and gives a presentation to a large group of academics, students and industry specialists. 70% of the mark is allocated for group work and 30% relates to individual performance.
Authentic assessment - MA students are working with real companies to provide live consultancy. The students write a report to the company and present the findings verbally with recommendations.
Using Twitter as a form of assessment - in order to encourage active participation in lectures and seminars, the staff at the University of Glasgow piloted the use of social media as a form of assessing students skills.
Innovative Assessment at Greenwich
The examples above focus on other institutions, however, innovative practice with feedback and assessment is taking place at the University of Greenwich. Many examples of innovative practice at the university comes from the Greenwich Connect Seed Fund projects, links to those projects will redirect you to the Greenwich Connect pages.
Addressing briefs from clients - Paul Simpson, incorporates technology into his assessments by asking his PR students to respond to past briefs, adding through that authenticity to his assessment design. The link will redirect to the the YouTube channel with several interviews with Paul during which he talks about how integrates technology in his teaching and assessment.
Virtual Law Clinic is a cooperation between the staff from the Law Department aiming to use technology to bridge academic and professional practice by involving students, staff and professional bodies into addressing legal queries from the public. The students involved would be assessed on the basis of advice provided.
Video presentations in history – Claire Eustance (History) replaced traditional essay writing with video presentations about Jack the Ripper's London.
Peer guidance via podcasts - a project led by Gavin Rand (History) aimed to utilise the experience of Level 5 students to create audio assessment guides for their younger peers.
Podcasts as a form of assessment - Andrew Ferrier in the Business School asks students to submit an assessment in the form of a podcast.
Audio-visual feedback – Erica Sheward from NRI used Adobe Connect to provide richer, better quality feedback to her MSc students.