6.2 Assessment Walkthrough

Especially where students are working in groups, or attempting the same or similar projects, it can be difficult to decide who-really-did-what.

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This bundle allows staff to validate that the work described/delivered is that of the student, to ensure that the claims made for the deliverables are correct, and to clarify any statements made in the final report.

The way it works is: students meet with staff to undertake a terminal "walk through" of their project deliverables, using any of the standard forms described in the software engineering literature, depending on the goals of the project as well as on how many students are involved. Possibilities include: review of designs against specifications, implementations against designs, code against local standards. (Pressman, R. S. (1992) Software Engineering, a practitioner's approach, McGraw-Hill, New York.). It may take the form of a presentation (although there is still the possibility of students "hiding" here) or a dialogue. The results of this process inform the assessment of the students work, but are not necessarily themselves assessed.

It works better if students have had practice with, or are at least aware of, the form and function of software reviews, and hence in projects with a Software Engineering focus.

It doesn't work unless staff and students can commit the time to make it a collaborative, non-intimidating, process.

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So: use processes derived from software engineering to enhance assessment.