Chapter 7 – Hands-on assessment in a hands-off world: strategic implementation o
Chapter 7 – Hands-on assessment in a hands-off world: strategic implementation of inclusive assessment in an online environment
Professor Sarah Jones and Professor Alasdair Blair
A month before the first pandemic lockdown, JISC published a paper on assessment with the conclusion that it needed to be ‘smarter, faster, fairer and more effective’ (JISC, 2020). The paper argued that assessments needed a technological overhaul by 2025 to become more authentic, accessible, appropriately automated, continuous and secure.
The radical overhaul that JISC were arguing for came much sooner than expected due to the pandemic. Universities were closed, and exams and assessments could no longer take place as intended. As the pandemic unfolded, assessment remained a core concern for students, with 74% of students worried about how it would impact their final qualification (NUS, 2020).
This chapter will explore how hands-on assessments were forced to become hands-off. Through our roles as senior academic leaders, it will begin with a strategic response to ensure there was equality and inclusivity in assessment design whilst maintaining quality and standards.
The strategic approach to pandemic assessments
Why were formal university exams traditionally taken on campus with written exam books in a digital age? Why were exams traditionally delivered in blocks ranging between 1-3 hours? Why were exams tending to follow tried and tested approaches of essays, short answers, laboratory tests, and multiple-choice formats? Although scholars had asked such questions for a number of decades prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (Elston & Johnston, 2002), there had been little significant change, despite evidence suggesting that traditional assessment methods were neither fit for purpose for employers nor fully beneficial for students in terms of addressing learning needs (Williams et al., 2014; Jorre de St Jorre & Oliver, 2018).
At De Montfort University (DMU), the formal exam schedule that was initially published for the 2020 summer exam schedule had increased to 313 formal exams and 41,441 student sittings. The reality of the pandemic meant that all summer 2020 exams were either taken online over a 24-hour window, or delivered in a different assessment format. While the Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities (ADH) had very few exams, all of these exams had to be adapted for an online format, with the exception of the need for in-person exams in a few specific subjects, such as English, History, and Dance.
Key considerations
One of our key considerations early in the pandemic response was how to structure our academic delivery to ensure that it reflected the needs of all students. We developed a range of guidance that included a ‘top 10’ principles of online pedagogy, the first of which was a recognition that there is no such thing as a typical student (DMU, 2021a). As an advocate of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), we needed to ensure that all students had an e