This miniproject aimed to determine how forms of assessment measure what is valued and whether students recognise this.
The investigation into students’ and lecturers’ perceptions of summative assessment of mathematics at undergraduate level took the following form; Determining:
1. staff and students views on the value and validity of different assessment forms;
2. the relationship between staff and students views; and,
3. the reasons given for holding those views.
Twelve students and six academics volunteered to be interviewed for the project. The interview data collected for the study was fully transcribed and analysed independently by the two applicants. The data from the questionnaire with students and staff was also analysed.
Outcomes:
1. The data from the survey of assessment methods in mathematics departments in the UK was accepted for publication:
Iannone, P. and Simpson, A., The Summative Assessment Diet: How we assess in mathematics degrees, Teaching Mathematics and its Applications.
Abstract: Much research and many papers on mathematics pedagogy have discussed assessment and, in particular, the need to provide a varied diet of methods by which students are assessed for the award of their degree. In this article, we explore the mix of assessment methods provided across a range of UK university mathematics departments. We examine the relationship between the mix of assessment methods and type of institution and between the type of assessment and the mathematical topic. We found that closed book exam is still the most common assessment method in undergraduate mathematics, with some new assessment methods, such as projects and presentations, now used in most UK institutions.
2. Preliminary findings from the student survey were published in:
Iannone, P. & Simpson, A. (2011). Assessment preferences in university mathematics. Proceedings of the 35th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (B. Ubuz ed.), vol. 3. Ankara, Turkey: PME. pp 49-56.
Abstract: In undergraduate mathematics, there appear to be only a small number of forms of assessment in widespread use and these tend to be those most open to criticism about validity. This paper surveys students’ preferences for assessment methods alongside their views about their lecturers’ preferences of these methods. We uncover evidence of potential mismatches between how students want their achievement to be measured and what they perceive experts want. The paper shows that – with a few interesting exceptions – students tend to prefer traditional assessment methods over those often labelled ‘innovative’ and that where there are mismatches between students’ and lecturers’ perceived preferences, these can be accounted for by apparent ease of preparation.