Flexible assessment and student empowerment: advantages and disadvantages – research from an Australian university

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses a two-year study at an Australian university in which 154 undergraduate and 51 postgraduate students reflected on their experiences with flexible and personalised assessment where they could choose assessment tasks, submission dates and weightings of their assignments. Through pre- and post-course surveys and a focus group, feelings of empowerment and attitudes towards flexibility were investigated. Students were positive about all aspects of the flexible approach and felt it was beneficial for their learning. Only the postgraduate group showed significant improvement in feelings of empowerment and grades suggesting that more experienced learners may adapt more easily to this model. We argue that empowering learners is not about better grades but about students gaining more input, voice and control in their learning and assessment. Despite the disadvantages of increased workload for teachers and a decision-making burden on students, the potential benefits for students justify consideration of more personalised and flexible assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Student choices
• flexible learning
• flexible assessment
• personalised assessment
• student empowerment

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the students who participated in this study. We are also grateful for the insightful and helpful comments by the independent reviewers of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).