Overview

Students should be given opportunities to shape their assessment experience and focus their subject expertise. By having choice and flexibility, students will have more agency in the assessment process which can increase their engagement and motivation, promote learner autonomy, reduce the need for alternative assessments or adjustments, and increase academic integrity.

Assessment flexibility has the potential to be more inclusive and address social justice issues such as awarding differentials for some student groups. It is not about offering unlimited choice or options to students but allowing students some choice in the work they produce.

There is a concern that flexibility in assessment means a greater workload for students and academic staff and presents challenges to consistency of marking. Properly implemented there is no evidence to suggest that flexible assessment increases workload (Irwin and Hepplestone, 2012). Having a greater choice in assessment can be more engaging for the students to produce and for staff to mark. In terms of fairness in marking, it is important to develop assessment criteria that reflect the flexibility of the assessment and most importantly judge the degree to which the learning outcomes have been met in the work the students produce.

Approaches to assessment flexibility and choice

Students should be given opportunities to shape their assessment experience and focus their subject expertise. By having choice and flexibility, students will have more agency in the assessment process which can increase their engagement and motivation, promote learner autonomy, reduce the need for alternative assessments or adjustments, and increase academic integrity.

Examples of how choice and flexibility could be offered include:

• Students decide the mode of assessment. For example, some students could do a live presentation whilst others can pre-record a video presentation.
  
  
• Students choose one task from a range of tasks provided.
  
  
• Students choose the topic they address.
  
  
• Students co-create the assessment task.
  
  

The following are ideas on how choice and flexibility can be offered in common assessment modes.

• Exams: Use of open-book or time-limited take-home exams, choice of exam questions.
  
  
• Essays and reports: students choose their title or topic, students produce a slide-deck report (which is a slide-deck designed to be read rather than presented and is more visual than a traditional essay or report.)
  
  
• Presentations: pre-recorded videos, podcasts.
  
  

University College Dublin have compiled ‘A Practitioner’s Guide to Choice of Assessment Methods Within a Module’ [PDF]