Has Time Come to Finally Revolutionise Assessment and Feedback?

But what’s the point of writing a test at the end of the term with the help of Google or Wikipedia and getting just a number for it? And what about writing lengthy essays which nobody will ever read, let alone comment on? This traditional way of checking students’ progress is not beneficial at all! What’s needed instead is continuous assessed work that gets feedback, which can be incorporated in subsequent versions of that particular task. And the term can be finished with the final product! 

A Practical Example

Let me give you an example of my idea. I teach teaching methodology and linguistics at university, but I’ll pick the latter subject because most people I know have deep dark fears in connection with linguistics. So, let’s say we covered phonology. First, I’ll ask my students to think of one question they could ask from each other, send it to me, and I’ll put it in a gamified quiz to revise (via Socrative Space Race or Quizlet Live). Then they’ll play a BINGO game with phonemes, which I create with http://www.myfreebingocards.com/. Finally, they find a song they love and notice the phonological rules we covered, and create a video in which they explain what they’ve found! 

I know I am being a bit idealistic here, and not everybody is willing to put the same amount of work in all their subjects. However, we are all adults, and we should take responsibility for our own actions and for how much effort we wish to put in something. At least the opportunity is there to do something creative, to prove that the knowledge you acquired throughout the term can be actually used for something, and it can be incorporated into bigger projects, as it will most likely happen in real life as well.

This is not an easy task but what better time to start it than now, when everything we have taken for granted for so long has been turned upside down?