Common forms of assessment

Common forms of written, oral and hybrid assessment tasks.

Written

Essays

are a common form of assessment in many tertiary disciplines. The ability to construct good essays involves understanding the task, process (planning, developing, writing, editing), and conventions of academic writing. Through an essay writing task, lecturers can help you to develop and learn academic writing skills, including: formulating arguments, presenting evidence, integrating material from sources, and referencing appropriately. The process of writing essays may teach you to synthesise and evaluate theoretical ideas and concepts, and develop your research skills. Additionally, you can learn academic and discipline-specific writing conventions and develop drafting, editing and revising skills.

Problem-solving assignments

help to reinforce material that has been taught in classes and helps to develop your problem-solving skills. These assignments allow you to put into practice the concepts and theory that have been taught. Difficulties that you face in completing problem-solving assignments help point to aspects on which you need to clarify your understanding.

Reports

are a specific form of writing that gives a full account of what has been observed, done or investigated in a laboratory or experimental study. It has structural elements not found in essays and is visually distinguishable from essays. It also tests your ability to describe, explain and analyse the results of an experiment or study.

Journals

encourage an ongoing reflective, personal connection with learning. Their less formal writing approach can promote creative and lateral thinking around paper content. Journals can help you to evaluate their learning, link theory and practice, and integrate different kinds of knowledge. The journal is a good way to promote dialogue between you and your lecturers and helps you develop reflective writing and analytical skills.

Case Studies

apply theoretical ideas to practical contexts. They enable you to see the relevance of academic ideas, prompt you to use ideas creatively and think laterally. All of these attributes need to be developed for the workplace.

Portfolios

enable you to represent your learning in a range of ways and  take responsibility for your learning progress. In a portfolio, you select the items of work  (e.g. evidence of practice, reflective commentaries, evidence of work and addressing feedback) that you wish to include to represent the learning that has occurred in a particular paper. You may be asked to demonstrate how the items you have selected connect with paper learning outcomes.

Portfolios promote reflection, self-evaluation, and ongoing personal and possibly professional engagement, as well as demonstrating practical and creative abilities. Additionally, they provide a valuable source of information regarding your abilities that you could share with prospective employers.

Critiques

are a way of systematically and objectively reviewing a piece of research to highlight strengths and weaknesses.

Annotated bibliographies

are alphabetical lists of sources formatted like a reference list, where each reference is accompanied by a critical commentary.

Research proposals

require you to develop research question(s) and develop a case for a proposed study. A proposal should include a clear context, identify a gap in the literature, and include research design components.

Literature reviews

bring together arguments from multiple sources to develop an argument for a research proposal or can be a stand-alone task.

Written preparation

exercises (such as focus questions) encourage reading and teach academic reading and writing skills. They promote active, focused and critical reading of materials, enhance writing development, paper skills, and the development of relevant competencies and allow you to get regular feedback on your learning progress. By promoting active participation, written preparation exercises provide lecturers with an effective way of evaluating student participation.

Tests

provide a mechanism to check your independent knowledge and understanding.

Examinations
  • Closed book, fixed time period examinations provide evidence of your unaided work and allow integration of learning from the entire paper.
  • Closed book, prepared answers examinations encourage integration of ideas from a wider range of sources.
  • Open book or restricted book, fixed time period examinations can reduce anxiety as they do not focus on memorisation yet still provide evidence of your unaided work.

Related help pages

Student Learning has extensive help pages on:

Written assessments are commonly completed through Moodle. See the help with Moodle pages for details on how to submit assessments, attempt quizzes, and view grades and feedback.

You may also be asked to work in Mahara, which is an ePortfolio tool. See the Mahara ePortfolio pages for instructions on how to do common tasks in Mahara.

Oral and hybrid

Common forms of oral or hybrid assessment tasks

Group work

Emphasis on collaborative learning, problem-solving and critical evaluation, and is a valuable preparation for the workplace. Through group work, you can make use of complementary skills, deepen your understanding through interaction and discussion, and deal with a range of perspectives thereby enhancing your critical thinking skills. You can develop team skills and learn to work with a range of people.

Computer, design and other lab practicals

allow you to become familiar with various types of software and equipment for different types of applications. Critical evaluation of the output is appropriate in some contexts and so helps to develop your thinking skills.

For some disciplines, the computer practicals allow you to implement algorithms, become more proficient in computer programming, and possibly develop software for practical applications. In other disciplines, the computer practicals may allow you to do tasks relevant to your studies which would not be possible by hand (e.g. visualisation of data or analysing large amounts of data) or practice skills specific to your discipline (e.g. computer programming, structural design). The practical skills developed in these computer tasks will be of use in the workplace.

Performance and composition tasks

require you to demonstrate your skills and knowledge, for example, in music or theatre studies. You may be required to compose and perform a musical piece, or choreograph or act in a stage performance.

Oral presentations

assist you to master learning, oral communication, and persuasive skills. Through this, you learn how to organise arguments using supporting evidence, select relevant material, and engage critically with ideas while developing understanding and confidence. Not only do oral presentations promote the sharing of ideas in the classroom, but they can also give immediate feedback on the quality of your understanding of the material.

 

Seminars

allow you, individually or with a group, to research a topic, provide a presentation to your class and facilitate the discussion. This is also an opportunity to promote autonomy by giving you  some of the management of the teaching and learning process.

Field work

provides an opportunity for on-site work on a project in a context related to the discipline. Field work provides an authentic context to link with classroom learning.

Practicums and work-integrated learning placements

give you the opportunity to demonstrate the skills or competencies that will be needed in real life situations. They may include practice teaching, interviewing a client or conducting a laboratory experiment.

Participation marks

reflect your engagement with paper learning and develop your ability to communicate and discuss ideas. These can help enhance class participation and provide you with immediate feedback on your learning.

Simulations and role-plays

allow you a chance to explore authentic scenarios and case studies that reflect the complexity of situations that you might experience in the real world, potentially by taking the perspective of a particular role.

Problem-solving assignments

help to reinforce material that has been taught in classes and help to develop your problem-solving skills. These assignments allow you to put into practice the concepts and theory that have been taught. Difficulties that you face in completing problem-solving assignments help point to aspects on which you need to clarify your understanding.

Journals

encourage an ongoing personal connection with learning. The less formal writing approach can promote creative and lateral thinking around paper content. Journals can help you to evaluate your learning, link theory and practice and integrate different kinds of knowledge. The journal is a good way to promote dialogue between you and your lecturers and help you to develop reflective and analytical skills. Journals can be partly or entirely in audio or video formats.

Case Studies

apply theoretical ideas to practical contexts. They enable you to see the relevance of academic ideas, prompt you to use ideas creatively and think laterally. All of these attributes need to be developed for the workplace.

Portfolios

enable you to represent your learning in a range of ways and take responsibility for your learning progress. In some cases, you may put together a video portfolio with recorded tasks.

Vivas 

are tests conducted verbally rather than in writing. You may be asked to give responses to examination questions in their entirety, or you could be asked to explain the way you worked through a select subset of questions previously responded to in writing. This helps to show your thinking more transparently.

Related help pages

Student Learning provides:

Some assessments may be completed on Zoom or by submitting videos through Panopto.

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