Practical Assessment
This page describes an implementation of an assessment method by a lecturer or group of lecturers. The content of the page is the result of an interview conducted through the RAFT project in DIT in the 2013-14 Academic Year.
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Lecturer and Contact Details
Programme and year on which assessment was offered
- BSc Optometry, Years 1-4
Description
Students are assessed on their competency to carry out a practical technique
What have you found are the advantages of using this form of assessment?
- Students really focus on mastering how to do something if they know they will have a practical assessment in it and if they know that if they fail that assessment they have to repeat it until they are deemed competent
- It is a lot less arduous than marking weekly lab reports
- When they pass you can be confident that they have a real ability to carry out a technique
What have you found are the dis-advantages of using this form of assessment?
- For the more complex techniques students have to be assessed one on one which is time consuming
- It can be tedious for the lecturer and students to pratise the same technique repeatedly
- Rarely some students need multiple repeats before finally demonstrating competence. (We normally cap the repeats at 4).
Assessment in practice
It is only suitable for large classes where the students do not have to be observed e.g. students can be asked to measure something which has already been pre-measured then all you have to do is check they got the correct measurements you don’t have to actually observe them.
Assessment Time
- Preparation time (lecturer): In the first year it can take a long time to set up exactly how a practical assessment will be run and marked and in subsequent years there is normally tweaking of both the running and marking each year.
- Student time to complete: Depends on the complexity of the task but usually a couple of lab sessions to get eh hang of the technique and then one lab session given over to assessment
- Marking time: where the student is being observed they are normally marked as the assessment proceeds with a small amount of note making and totting up afterwards. Where the student is not being observed it takes as long as it would to mark a very simple maths assessment.
- Ease of Feedback: straightforward if notes are made during the assessment.
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