ABSTRACT

The assessment of students and their work is a huge topic in itself and covered in other books in this series. However, the separation of ‘helping students to learn’ (teaching and learning approaches) and ‘finding out if they have learnt’ (assessment) is clearly false and can be an unhelpful notion in course design. When considering assessment in the SGT setting, many of the generic ‘key issues’ of assessment are relevant. What are the purposes of the assessment? Is the assessment summative (i.e. counts for marks and grades) or is it formative (i.e. to give constructive feedback to the learner)? What aspects of knowledge attainment, skills and attitudinal development can or should be assessed? And what methods can make this process reliable, valid and fair for the students while being manageable, resourceable and effective from the tutor’s perspective?