Kwong Nui Sim

An assessment arms race and its fallout: high-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship

This research questions the impact of assessment on university teaching and learning in circumstances where all student work is graded. Sixty-two students and lecturers were interviewed to explore their experiences of assessment at an institution that had adopted a modular course structure and largely unregulated numbers of internal assessments. Lecturers rewarded student work with grades and controlled study behaviour with assessment. In some situations it was possible to experience hundreds of graded assessments in an academic year. Students were single-minded when it came to grades and would not work without them. These conditions contributed to competition for student attention and a grading arms race between academics and subjects. In this context, the spaces for achieving certain educational objectives, such as fostering self-motivated learners, were marginalised. Both students and lecturers were unsatisfied with this situation, but neither group could envisage radical change. Students were generally happy to accumulate small marks, while being irritated and stressed by frequent grading. Lecturers were aware of better practices but felt trapped by circumstances. The idea of slow scholarship is introduced to encourage a re-think of such assessment practices, support a positive shift in assessment culture and contribute to the theories of assessment.

‘Will press lever for food’: behavioural conditioning of students through frequent high-stakes assessment

This piece offers some challenging ideas about using assessment in the behavioural conditioning of students in higher education. Recently, we conducted a research project that looked at the impacts of continuous, high stakes assessment at a New Zealand university (Harland, McLean, Wass, Miller, & Sim, 2014). We found that students were assessed so frequently that all their learning was done for a grade and if there were no grade involved, then they would not study. Students had a love–hate relationship with grading: they were not keen to have exams that were worth 100% and acknowledged that frequent small assessments were useful for keeping them on track. However, at the same time, they felt stressed by being continually assessed. Lecturers recognised this set of circumstances, but to compete for student time, had to set grades for all work. This state of affairs resulted in an assessment arms race between lecturers who controlled student study behaviour with grading. We considered such practices to impact negatively on the development of autonomous, self-directed and life-long learners. In essence, the culture of assessment we observed seemed to produce compliant students who expected a reward for all effort. Are these the sort of attributes that reflect a higher education, or the outcomes society expects in return for its investment in our university system?