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In my other article ‘Are Your Students
Spending Enough Time on Your Module?’ , I stated that
I believe an effective continuous assessment should:
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literally be ‘continuous’ throughout the semester;
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have a weightage close to that of the final exam; and
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comprise a variety of assessment components.
In fact, (2) and (3) naturally follow from (1): if you have assessments
more frequently, you need to allow a higher weightage for the CA
and have alternative assessment tools to use.
Some lecturers are reluctant to have more frequent assessments
because:
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Time consuming: It takes up a lot of time to prepare and grade
those assessments and to enter marks, especially for large classes.
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Bad teaching evaluation: Students may resent the heavy workload
and this will affect the rating of their teaching evaluation.
For (A), I must say that devoting more time to preparing the various
assessments is inevitable. If you are serious about teaching, then
you shouldn’t consider CAs as an extra burden but part of
your teaching preparation. If you do not want your students
to do a minimal job, you should not do a minimal job yourself.
To help you grade and enter marks, it is possible to engage tutors,
graduate students or management support officers to assist you.
If you have assistants to do the grading, you should get feedback
from them or go through some samples of the assessments yourself
to understand the students’ progress and/or the problems they
faced. You may also try out the IVLE assessment tool (online quizzes)
as a CA component. The system automatically grades and generates
the results for you.
For (B), it depends on how you use your assessment tools. If you
give a ‘heavy’ mid-term test every other week, the students
will feel stressed and a negative effect may result. Instead, have
a ‘lighter’ assessment component, such as short quizzes,
to supplement the mid-term. In one semester, I gave my students
lecture quizzes every lecture. They had to answer two to five short
questions that they could discuss among themselves. It turned out
that my teaching evaluation rating for that semester was the highest
I have ever had. Hence, communicate with your students: let
them know you are implementing CA for their own good.
For basic courses, it is also appropriate to give homework assignments.
Most students like to have more practice. So they won’t mind
including homework as part of CA. I think bi-weekly homework assignments
are just nice. Have a mix of both easy and hard problems. If you
have graders to assist you, make sure they write down some qualitative
comments. The students will find the feedback useful.
The following are some of the assessment tools I have tried out:
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online quizzes,
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lab worksheets,
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group projects,
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homework assignments,
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lecture quizzes,
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classroom participations,
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mid-term test, and
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practice sessions.Some of these assessment tools are formal
(b, g), while some are informal (e, f, h). Some involves group
discussion (c, e, f), while some require independent work (b,
d, g). Some are suitable for a smaller class size (c, f), while
some are more for the big classes (a, e). Some are suitable
for basic courses (d, h), while some are more for advanced courses
(c, f).
Use assessment tools that are appropriate for your modules. You
may customise them to suit your (and your students’) need.
The various assessment tools should complement each other. Bear
in mind that the purpose of implementing CA is to make your students
learn consistently and effectively.
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