Assessment

Assessment of practical work needs care to avoid potential overloading of both students and staff. Is it necessary for each student to write a report on each task, or can the outcome of report writing be adequately assessed with, say, three reports and other means used to assess other learning outcomes, such as a laboratory interview, practical demonstration or practical examination?

One approach to report writing might be that a student has to submit, say, two satisfactory reports. They might be required to continue to submit reports, and obtain developmental feedback, until two consecutive reports achieve the necessary standard.

Assessment should always be against the learning outcomes that have been set. So it would be unlikely to be sensible to assess strictly practical competence such as soldering together electronic components, production of an interactive computer programme or taking blood pressure with a report alone.

The way in which practical work is marked should be considered. Should it be pass/fail, given an alpha grade, marked out of 10 or a percentage?

If the assessment is quite subjective, it is worthless spending five minutes to decide whether to award 53% or 54%. If the outcomes are clearly defined consideration should be given to awarding a pass/fail for the practical content and using an alpha scale for the report.