6.4 "Authentic" Assessment Criteria

If you set a problem that involves programming, students will construct it as being solely about programming.

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This bundle uses students' understanding of project lifecycles to characterise appropriate deliverables, and to weight the effort (and risk) involved in producing each one. The resulting list is then used to generate the assessment criteria (and associated weightings) for the deliverables of an assessed software project.

The way it works is that, before students start on a project (but after they know what the project will be), a "negotiation" session is undertaken in which the appropriate activities for such a project are discussed, listed and relative weightings are agreed. This discussion can be "steered" and the outcome "stitched-up" by the facilitator deprecating (and discarding) some suggestions and coalescing others, as well as making sure that all the necessary elements are present. This session can be undertaken with the entire cohort (if it's not too large) or in smaller groups with the facilitator combining and moderating the results.

The outcome of this should be a list of the activities, a weight for each activity (typically 5-15% of the total effort), and a list of where in the deliverables of the project evidence for the quality of that aspect might be found. This list can then be used to guide students' efforts and priorities in undertaking the project, as (they are told at the end of the session) the effort weightings are used as assessment weightings.

It works better if it is embedded in a software engineering module or programme, so that discussions of weightings are guided by an understanding of appropriate processes.

It doesn't work unless the project to be undertaken is process-centred, and the students already have an understanding of what this means. All students must be undertaking the same project, unless you are prepared to negotiate with each student.

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So: use pre-specified, agreed and published criteria to direct students' activities in assessed work.