Alternative Assessment Techniques

Alternative Assessment Techniques

This node covers open-book, versus closed-book examinations and integrated exams, as well as other means of examining student learning.

During the Covid-19 pandemic many higher education institutions moved away from traditional closed-book short time-constrained exams to alternative methods, and some of these will be discussed here.

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Index

2. Seen exams

1. Unseen exams

3. Open-book exams

4. Integrated exam questions

Index

5. References

Unseen Exams

This kind of assessment almost needs no introduction, as most people will have heard the phrase ‘you may now turn your paper over’ at some time in their educational career.

An unseen exam is a time-constrained assessment task, presented to students for the first time at the beginning of the assessment.

Unseen exams are usually hand-written and last two to three hours. They are sometimes required by professional bodies.

Things to think about in unseen exams

Unseen exams test the ability to work under a time constraint and can be very stressful for students. Unseen exams are an artificial situation which students are unlikely to encounter outside education.

They may favour a particular learning style and it is usually recommended that they are used as part of a varied assessment strategy to allow students to demonstrate their ability in a range of situations.

Things to think about in unseen exams

The traditional unseen exam consists of a series of essay questions or scientific or mathematical problems.

The wording of the questions will reflect whether you want students to demonstrate recall of the course material under examination conditions (using phrasing such as ‘describe’), or to apply what they have learned to novel situations and problems (using ‘evaluate’, ‘analyse’ and ‘solve’).

It can be difficult to do both of these things thoroughly under time-constrained conditions. Students who need extra time for writing, or who have difficulty in hand-writing and need to type their assignments, will need special arrangements to be made in advance.

Seen exams

A seen examination is a time-constrained assessment task, presented to students at some time in advance of the assessment. The actual exam is still taken under strict conditions, with no external material allowed into the exam room and a time limit for completing the answers.

Seen examinations are sometimes used to reduce student anxiety about exams and to allow the inclusion of more complex analytical questions which need some preparation.

Seen exams

A variation on the seen examination may be to provide some material ahead of the examination, such as a case study, and to say that questions will be set around that case study.

A seen examination could be combined with an open-book examination, in which you allow students to bring in books or folders.

Things to think about in seen exams

The timing of the release of the question(s) is important.

If you want students to think about the question throughout the module, then it could be released right at the beginning of the module and referred to regularly during the course.

If you want students to work to a time constraint, as they might have to in the workplace, then you could release the question one to six weeks before the exam.

Students will of course be able to discuss the question in advance of the exam, and this may lead to some similarity of answers, just as you might find for a coursework assessment.

Open-book exams

Time-constrained seen or unseen exams where students can bring in books or folders can be useful if you want to test skills in application, analysis and evaluation.

They can be particularly useful if you want to see how students cope with a particular professional engineering situation without much time to consult widely.

They also test students’ ability to identify and bring with them the right kind of material.

Integrated exam questions

At TEDI-London the plan is to have an end of year 4 hour ‘Integrated Examination’. This will be open-book with access to resources. These resources may be limited to specific items allowed into the examination room, or wider, but limited internet access for all students.

The integrated examination, which is at the end of each year, should cover key subject areas and engineering theories and principles for that year of the course being examined. It should be a culmination of students putting into practice their knowledge and expertise in solving increasingly complex global engineering design problems.

Writing good exam questions

Exam questions should be written concisely with short sentences using plain English.

Avoid trick questions which are likely to result in confusion or self-doubt.

Write using bullet points or ordered lists if it helps to make the question clearer.

For questions with multiple parts, provide an indication of marks or time per section, which communicates the relative importance of each component.

Writing integrated exam questions

An example integrated examination scenario could be the setting of a problem to design a solution to a real engineering problem, and/ or could also be based on recent research work in that field.

Case studies, artefacts, data and research papers could be provided to allow the student to synthesise and analyse this problem, using the provided information and data to critically analyse and arrive at their own conclusions.

Writing integrated exam questions

The problem could be a real one set by an industrial partner, with data and further clarifying information provided by them for the students to analyse. Their experience of solving design problems throughout the year of the course being examined, would be put into practice with this new problem to be solved.

In this case there may not be a clear model answer, or only one solution to the problem, but the process that the students go through in attempting to find a solution could be assessed appropriately based upon typical design engineering methods and processes of synthesis and analysis.

Writing integrated exam questions

In terms of written length, the usual rule of thumb for an exam question is that students should be able to sit and write the answer in half the time available for the question, the other half being thinking and planning time.

In a four-hour integrated exam, students might be able to write in the region of 4000-6000 words in total depending on the actual problem concerned, and any calculations or graphical illustrations involved.

References

Adaptations from the work of Rachel Forsyth:

https://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/assessment/design/tasks/

https://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/assessment/design/tasks/Assessment%20types.pdf

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

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