A programme wide approach to assessment: a reflection on some curriculum mapping tools

Developing valid and reliable approaches to assessment that are efficient with staff andstudents’ time can be a challenge in today’s higher education institutions. Knight (2000)describes the tension between developing valid complex assessments and the time andeconomic resources associated with ensuring reliability in assessments. The learning styles,multiple intelligence and inclusive learning literature supports the use of a range of differenttypes of assessments to suit the different learners, yet how can staff do this in a systematicway that doesn’t exhausted themselves and the students in the process? Keenan and O’Neillin a study on assessment practices in University College Dublin found that staff and studentoverload was a significant feature of assessment practices (Keenan & O’Neill, 2008). Thisissue can be confounded by an additional need to consider increasing the level of formativeassessment, i.e. giving feedback to students (Juwah et al, 2004). One solution to these dilemmas is to take a programme-wide approach to assessment,ensuring that over the duration of a full programme students will: have adequateopportunity to be assessed in different ways; receive on-going feedback on their progress;be ensured of a valid and reliable final outcome; and be assessed in both simple andcomplex tasks. Among others, authors such as Knight (2000) and Diamond (1998) haveproposed some curriculum mapping tools to support in the design and monitoring ofassessment at programme level. In addition, institutions such as Murdoch University,Australia have implemented an electronic tool, mapping assessments to their programmes’graduate attributes (Lowe & Marshall, 2004). Graduate attributes, however, is a contentiousissue (Lowe and Marshall, 2004) and there is a need to reflect on how best these could beused to map assessment practices in a curriculum. This paper therefore will reflect on thefollowing questions:1) What are the advantages and challenges to exploring assessment at programme level?2) How does a sample of curriculum mapping tools compare and contrast in relation tohow, when and where they are used?