Actual assessment practices
المؤلف:
Mary-Jane Taylor & Coralie McCormack
المصدر:
Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment
الجزء والصفحة:
P66-C7
2025-06-09
576
Actual assessment practices
However, along with the curriculum revision of the University, current assessment practices of some departments may not match with this revision and need to be aligned. They specify that the examination and continuous assessment1 components of all the subjects should have a standard percentage of the final grade in all subjects they teach. For example; 50% examination and 50% continuous assessment, and 70% examination and 30% continuous assessment. This can be a constraint on the way in which a subject is taught and assessed. One teacher commented:
"If the lecturer has a different group of students or he thinks of a different assessment method, it's difficult for him to change. In some ways this policy may be seen to be good as its standardized but it's too specific and may hinder the flexibility when tailoring to the different needs of subjects and trying to assess students better...Many assessments are by written examinations, this guarantees individual effort but it may not really reflect the real capability of students." (Teacher, Department A)
In some of the departments interviewed, assessment methods such as closed book examinations, tend to encourage rote learning. As a result, they are not likely to truly reflect students' ability of that particular subject and its expected learning outcomes. An interesting comment from a student who had clearly learnt how to "work the system" was:
"Examinations cannot reflect much of what you have learned and understood in a subject. It is very short term. ... Because examinations normally focus on several hot questions, and the questions are roughly of the same type every year but only with different figures, I have enough time to practice them well even if I start revising three days before the examination. ...we do most of our studies just before the examinations and shortly after it is all over, I have almost forget everything I learnt ... I think it's OK for me and I heard from other classmates that they got a A+ just by using such a studying strategy." (Student, Department B)
It seems clear from this statement, that the type of assessment was a traditional closed book examination, probably with standard type questions that come up every year with some minor modifications. This type of approach only tends to encourage surface learning by students and to cause the negative backwash effect, i.e. just to rote learn how to answer standard questions, and then after the examination is finished, and they have obtained their grade, they forget most of what they learnt (if anything) and move on to the next subject. The teacher plays a key role in this process, and if there is an emphasis on this type of assessment, it only leads students to focus on how to get the highest grade with the minimum effort - the so-called MaxMin principle. But if the subject is planned to engage students in deep learning and to examine students' understanding, then this type of assessment will be in appropriate. Furthermore, the predominance of summative assessment (marking or grading) in the University tends to further reinforce such a backwash effect caused by inappropriate assessment.
From the above discussion, it seems that there is often an over-emphasis on the weighting of assessment components and on following the traditional assessment method rather than focusing on assessment of students' expected learning outcomes that have been correctly aligned with subject objectives, and teaching and learning activities.
1 Continuous assessment in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University refers to all assessment components apart from a final examination. These assessments occur during the semester when a subject is taught (e.g. individual and group assignments, case studies, tests, quizzes, etc.)
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