Matching Student Assessment to Problem-based Learning: Lessons from experience in a law faculty

Congruence between instruction and assessment is an essential condition for realising such innovations in education as problem-based and life-long learning. Schools employing problem-based learning have always struggled to achieve congruence between their objectives and student achievement assessment. Reality has taught us that the ideals of problem-based and life-long learning are difficult to translate into an assessment system. This paper is a case study of the development of an assessment program in a problem-based learning curriculum, its pitfalls, the compromises between the ideal and the attainable, and the way in which a number of solutions were eventually found. It demonstrates the power of student assessment. Our law faculty developed a new assessment system based on a range of assessment methods, such as block tests, portfolios and formative computer-based tests, whereby the assessment program was continuously monitored and evaluated. The assessment program enhanced skills and changed attitudes that had been opposed to the ideals of life-long and problem-based learning. Empirical data on the quality of the new assessment system reveals that we went a step forward in matching problem-based learning with student assessment.