Designing assessment regimes
All of the tasks you set for a unit that are assessable comprise the assessment regime.
Assessment tasks play a key role in shaping and evaluating students’ learning. Well designed assessment activities work as motivation for learning, as well as providing measures of learning. To achieve these goals, though, tasks must align with the unit and course learning outcomes, unit content, and the students’ current levels of skill development.
Chief Examiners or Unit Coordinators are responsible for designing the unit’s assessment regime. The dean (or delegate) of the unit-owning faculty is responsible for approving the assessment regime as part of unit accreditation, and for approving any amendments. Where a coursework unit is offered in a graduate research course, the Graduate Research committee Course and Programs Sub-committee is responsible for approving the assessment regime.
What must the assessment regime include?
The assessment regime should be specifically designed for each unit, however all assessment regimes must:
- Assess all unit learning outcomes
- Assess knowledge, skills and attributes that contribute to the student’s achievement of course learning outcomes
- Be appropriate to the level and credit-point value of the unit
- Be equivalent for all modes and locations of offerings in the same teaching period
- Include at least two major assessment tasks (i.e. tasks worth at least 20% of the total unit assessment)
- Have no task worth more than 60% of the total unit assessment, except in zero credit point units or thesis units
- Be designed to minimise the potential for breaches of academic integrity
- Be renewed to prevent any students with knowledge of the task and/or its solution from a previous offering
- Have text-based assignments submitted electronically.
The Chief Examiner is responsible for implementation of the assessment regime.
Creating an appropriate assessment regime in your unit is context-specific. This resource will provide an overview of some key things to consider when developing a new - or revising an existing - assessment task or the entire assessment regime, and will point you towards more detailed support and resources for different aspects of the process.