Assessing Student Learning - good practice directory

Discipline Area

Veterinary Science

Key assessment issue addressed

Assessment method for large classes

The initiative

This report describes use of an innovative assessment task to encourage students to adopt deep approaches to learning. The goal was to find assessment methods that best encourage and support deep, holistic learning. My intention was to change student perceptions of what is "really important" to learn in veterinary neurophysiology by modifying the way students were assessed. This was necessary because students consider this topic difficult and believe it is best learnt by rote memorisation and recall. Consequently there was little impetus for students to pursue better quality learning outcomes (abstraction of meaning, construction of relationships between parts or reinterpretation of knowledge) and the capacity to integrate and apply information was never tested. This led students to ignore these components, so even though they appreciated the need to apply this knowledge to solve clinical cases in the future, few attempted to approach their learning from this perspective. Clearly the nature of the assessment tasks (multiple choice and short answer exam) had a detrimental impact on students' learning approaches and outcomes.

I modified the assessment tasks to encourage students to actively engage with the material and develop their own, complex understanding of the material, in keeping with a constructivist approach to learning (Biggs, 1996). Students had to be prepared for this change, so I devoted class time to linking aspects of neural processing and applying key concepts to real life problems. The assessment task was an open book test with a choice of questions based on situations from real life (e.g. falling cat landing on its feet). The questions required students to identify pathways for information processing and describe how they functioned together to enable the animal to perceive and respond to the stimulus. The divergent nature of the questions meant that each student constructed a unique, personal view of the problem. Their answers were exciting to read as students produced their own highly original concept maps, skillfully depicting the complexity of the system and their depth of understanding, suggesting that they had actively engaged with learning in this topic (Biggs, 1999). Marking their work was more interesting, challenging (due to the variation), but no more time consuming than the usual exam. The learning outcomes improved in the whole class, with no failures and an improvement in performance.

The feedback was positive and as one student reported "There was a huge difference in my approach to study. Instead of concentrating on cramming what was going to be in the paper it allowed for a complete overview, so we could see the big picture, which we will remember." Students perceived that the emphasis was on relationships and application rather than recall of specific details, and were confident that they would be rewarded for demonstrating these learning outcomes (based on the use of explicit grade descriptors). In a survey of students' approaches to learning, 66% of student reported a change, with 27% more students reporting a deeper conception of learning in this subject at the end of the unit. However some students had difficulty in adapting because the expectations were so different to those for other topics and Units they were taking, emphasising the importance of encouraging change in assessment practices across the Faculty.

References
Biggs, J. (1996) Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education 32:1-18
Biggs, J. (1999) Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Open University Press, Buckingham

Using an open book examination

Assessment methods for large classes

Discipline Area

Key assessment issue addressed

The initiative

The reason for the initiative's effectiveness

Further details