6.10 Phased Assessment (End-of-level-Guardian)

Students often feel that objectives and associated assessment criteria are not clear.

---ooOoo---

This bundle provides a mechanism whereby students can know what they have to do to achieve a particular grade and, at the same time, what their current level of achievement is.

The way it works is that associated with each deliverable (process or product) is an assessment checklist which defines what must be present in that deliverable, and an appropriate quality threshold. Deliverables have to conform to the appropriate assessment checklist before the grade is awarded, but conformance is sufficient.

Students begin work on the project by working on the lowest grade deliverables. The work is complete when the deliverable satisfies (by a process of and/or supervisory inspection) all the items on the associated checklists. Students can begin working on the next higher grade deliverables while the inspection process is being carried out.

If a deliverable does not conform with all the items on its checklist it must be re-worked and re-inspected. This activity continues until the deliverable conforms to the checklist. The students gradually work through the deliverables corresponding to each grade, in order.

If, later in the project, an earlier deliverable requires extension, it appears again at the higher grade. The deliverable is assessed against a checklist that takes account of the new requirements.

By this type of inspection and rework mechanism back-tracking and improvement can be rewarded. Each deliverable has to satisfy all the requirements, expressed on the checklists, but to achieve the highest grade a student also has to complete all the deliverables.

It works better if staff are familiar and comfortable with a deliverable-inspection process [see also 6.2, Assessment walkthrough].

It doesn't work unless staff and students have the ability (and QA freedom) to negotiate, and re-negotiate, learning outcomes. It doesn't work if students can skip stages and deliverables.

---ooOoo---

So: allow students to accumulate credit by delivering to defined thresholds.