Assessment for learning

Ta meg til den Norske versjonen

The choice of assessment forms(s) directly affects how much time students use on their learning. The choice of exam also has a direct effect on the students’ approach to learning and can lead to that they focus on understanding and construction of opinion rather than surface learning and memorization. In a learning perspective, we can the opportunity that Covid presents us to chance assessment and exams and steer the students’ learning in the desired direction.

In each exam situation, both small and large changes can have a positive effect on the students’ effort and their fundamental understanding of what learning and knowledge is.

Select your situation:

I want to use the opportunity to revise my assessment forms, and are looking for help to do so

I have to replace my on-campus written exam with another assessment form, and don't have the opportunity to make bigger changes

I want to use the opportunity to revise my assessment forms, and are looking for help to do so

Professor Arild Raaheim from the UiB department of University Pedagogy, authored the book “The exam revolution” in 2015, providing tips and advice about exams and alternative assessment. A main point in the book is that the assessment form cannot be understood independently of the learning outcomes, the students’ learning process and the teaching that makes up a course.

For you as a teacher, this means that you should ensure to pick an assessment form(s) after analyzing how the assessment form contributes to the constructive alignment of content, learning outcomes and teaching methods. If you need help doing this, you can ask colleagues who are familiar with the teaching- and assessment forms in your field, or you can contact the UiB Learning Lab, who will guide you in the process together with colleagues at the Department of University Pedagogy.

If you desire support in the your coming revision of assessment forms, feel free to get in touch with the UiB Learning Lab in UiB hjelp.

I have to replace my on-campus written exam with another assessment form, and don't have the opportunity to make bigger changes

English subtitles available, click CC.

Flowchart for changing assessment

Assessment has a central place in research and education. Teaching, learning and assessment of student achievement are always rooted in subject-specific contexts. At a university like UiB various forms of assessment are applied. All are legitimate and subject to common requirements for reliability, validity, transparency and fairness.

In practice, this means that, regardless of the form of assessment, your students should expect to have their achievements assessed based on the learning outcomes set for the course you are responsible for - in line with predictable criteria and standards.

Please consider what is possible and feasible this semester in consultation with the academic affairs unit at your department or faculty. We also recommend engaging in dialogue with fellow professors, including the designated front runners at your faculty, who may serve as critical friends also when it comes to rethinking and redesigning forms of assessment.

Here we have created a flow chart that helps you decide whether to change the form of assessment in courses you are responsible for.

Click on the flow chart to download in higher resolution.

Examples of alternative assessment forms - asynchronous, semi-synchronous and synchronous

English subtitles available, click CC.

How to Address Academic Dishonesty (cheating and plagiarism)

In order to avoid academic dishonesty, we recommend the measures below, alone or in combination. In consultation with the academic affairs unit at your department or faculty, you may as a course responsible:

Design the assignments in such a way that students will not benefit from communicating with each other or using resources on the Internet
Design the assessment in such a way that the students are challenged to use external resources or collaboration to solve the task.

You can also:

Consider the possibilities of changing the grade from the A-F scale to pass/fail to reduce performance pressure in a demanding situation.
Utilize the functionality in UiBs Digital Assessment System where students draw X tasks out of a pool of tasks, to reduce the impact of dialogue between students during the assessment. Read more here.
Use UiB's plagiarism control tool to detect cheating
Ensure that you don’t encourage academic dishonesty by reducing the time/increasing the workload in an exam within the given time limit. Research shows that this increases the probability of academic dishonesty (e.g. Brimble 2016, Handbook of Academic Integrity ch. 26)