“I have a cunning plan, my Lord”: Application of an assessment strategy to improve student learning

Abstract

This case study describes an assessment intervention with first year in-service educators, developed to address the students' lack of preparation for contact sessions. Mid-year tests were written under examination conditions in the morning session. In the afternoon session, the students were given an individual assignment which entailed marking their own examination script and then completing a questionnaire designed to ascertain the students' opinions of the process. The students were not told beforehand that they would be marking their own papers. The papers were subsequently marked by the facilitators who assessed not only the content knowledge, but also evaluated the quality of the marking.

The intervention revealed some interesting insights into adult, part-time students' attitudes to learning, teaching and assessment: While students may have engaged in rote learning in order to ‘catch up’, they claimed to have learned from the intervention; Most students felt confident to implement a similar assessment task with their school learners; The response showed that there were students who openly admitted to cheating and expected their learners to do so. In addition, the findings informed the design of the second cycle of emancipatory action research.

Keywords:

• In-service educators
• preparedness for contact sessions
• reflective practitioner
• emancipatory action research
• assessment strategy
• self-assessment
• cheating
• responsibility for learning