Conclusions of students' involvement in the formulation of assessment

An evaluation was performed upon the situation where a democratic process involved students in the selection of their group size and corresponding workload for computer science units. The situation arose because some students who, initially, had been keen to participate in a paired project to realize an academically and industrially justifiable project, were subsequently drafted into group work in other studies and were no longer able to participate in the paired project. The evaluation reveals that students were happy to participate in project definition and workload setting. Peer-learning allows a reduction in reliance of students upon academic staff to progress their project. Students had gains in generic skills such as teamwork while "loners" could function equally well, such as intra-group communication as might occur in an industrial software development team, problem-solving skills, a more complete analysis of the problem domain via discussion with peers, and assumption of roles by students within a group to exercise their particular skills. Desirable academic outcomes included cooperative setting of tasks that enabled students to extend and apply their programming skills, an appreciation of the coursework unit, while, in fact, they were studying it, useful application of the tools to be used to produce the implementation and the achievement of a real-world application within the equally real constraints imposed upon students of today.

In terms of progression of this experiment, we resolved future work as follows. Although students reported working steadily rather than a last-minute rush, further studies are required to see if such practice continues to be reported. Following the initial popularity of working in pairs while permitting some students to work individually, we need to investigate whether and why such perpetuates. An extension of the democratic process to determine appropriate points where students may choose between offered assignment topics as well as the formation of an equitable workload per group size - probably via monitoring of threads within online student discussion forums.

مواضيع ذات صلة

Research methodology The action inquiry process

Significance of the research

Design assessment and feedback

Feedback and learning

Assessment, learning and feedback in higher education Assessment and learning

Effective Verbal Feedback for Project-Based Assessment: A Case Study of the Graphic Design Critique

Further considerations for the student experience

The student experience Discussion

Comments from a student with a mark lower than expected

Comments from another student who agreed with the mark

Comments from a student who agreed with the mark

Comments from a student whose marks were above expectation