Encouraging student engagement and deeper approaches to learning through assessment

Encouraging student engagement and deeper approaches to learning through assessment

Teaching Context

Educator’s name: Professor Raoul Mulder
Subject name: ZOOL300006 - Animal Behaviour
Discipline: Behavioural Ecology
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Year level: Year 3 of the Bachelor of Science program
Class size: Approximately 70 students
Mode of delivery: On-campus

Details of Assessment Redesign

What was the previous assessment design?
Prior to the redesign, the assessments for the subject were:

  1. A brief ‘News and Views’ article, which was a concise popular news-style article based on a scientific paper (25%)
  2. Three peer reviews of draft News and Views articles written by other students (15%)
  3. A high-stakes invigilated in-person exam (60%)

What were the main issues with the previous assessment design?
There were two main issues that motivated Raoul and his team to redesign the assessment tasks in this subject:

  1. Few students were attending the three weekly live lectures during semester or completing the required readings
  2. Students seemed to be predominantly engaging with learning content at a surface level, as they were not performing well on the final exam which was designed to assess the application of knowledge in a new and authentic context

What was the main aim of the assessment redesign?
To redesign the assessment tasks so that students would be more motivated to engage with the readings and attend classes and have more opportunities to deepen their learning and improve exam performance.

How was the assessment redesigned?
After the redesign, the assessments for the subject were:

  1. Pre-class reading and social annotation tasks using Perusall (best eight attempts, worth 20%)
  2. Weekly in-class quizzes (best eight attempts, worth 20%)
  3. Written News and Views article, accompanied by a video presentation (30%)
  4. Invigilated in-person exam (30%)

The three weekly live lectures were replaced with one weekly 2-hour interactive live class and one fortnightly 2-hour skills studio. To encourage students to attend the weekly interactive classes, they are now expected to add text annotations via Perusall to a weekly reading before attending class, and to complete quizzes held during the live weekly interactive class. Students are also required to complete a smaller version of News and Views assignment, where they have the option to create a 3-minute video on an aspect of animal behaviour discussed in the fortnightly skills studios. These videos are shared with the class and students then collectively vote for the best one. Finally, the  exam was reweighted but not significantly redesigned.

Raoul notes that, while these changes to the subject were made prior to the release of ChatGPT, certain aspects of the assessment redesign have made it harder (but not impossible) for students to use generative AI tools to engage in academic misconduct. In particular, the Perusall task requires students to produce critical insights about specific readings that AI would likely not have access to, while the in-class quizzes are completed in a timed format that would make it hard to copy or write answers into ChatGPT. In addition, the video assignment requires students to engage on camera in the verbal dissemination of knowledge (although students could certainly generate a script for this presentation via ChatGPT).

What are the benefits or impact of the new assessment design? Is there any evidence to support these benefits or impact?
According to Raoul, ‘…the first time that we ran [this new design, there] was a massive change in engagement. Students went from doing no prep to doing, on average, two hours of reading before class. They went from no conversation to 15 to 20 comments [each] about the course material every week before class. And we had thousands and thousands and thousands of annotations [on Perusall]. The quality of the discussions in class was much better. The engagement work in class was much better... we had 95% attendance the whole way through the semester.’

However, despite these improvements in student participation and engagement, performance on the final exam did not improve. In subsequent iterations of the subject, Raoul and his team have since ensured that at least one question in each of the weekly in-classes quizzes focuses on content that students need to understand to do well on the exam (e.g., aspects of experimental design). There are also opportunities for students to take part in ‘think, pair, share’ activities on these topics in class as well. Since these additional changes were implemented, exam performance has begun to improve.

Raoul indicated that students tend to hold one of two opinions about the subject design, because it is so different to other subjects in their programs. More specifically, students tend to either love it or find it to be a bit intimidating at first. However, mid-semester evaluation survey results have shown that the interactive classes, social annotations, and live polls are most frequently mentioned by students as the things that are most helpful for their learning.

Featured Assessment Strategies

This subject showcases three of the seven practical strategies for improving assessment design and integrity. More details of each of these strategies are provided below.

Incorporate more authentic, context-specific or personal assignments

The assessment design for this subject features two tasks (AT1, AT3) that are highly relevant to the discipline of Evolutionary Ecology and authentic to the work of a researcher in this discipline. The Perusall task (AT1) requires students to engage with the academic literature on various topics and generate their own critical insights about those readings using social annotations. They are also able and encouraged to reflect and respond to the annotations of their peers during this task. The News and Views tasks (AT3) requires students to translate information from a scientific article in language that is suitable for a lay audience.

Diversify assessment formats

This subject includes assessments which require students to produce written work (AT1, AT3, AT4), video recordings (AT3) and responses to online quizzes (AT2).

Incorporate more in-class and group assignments

The weekly quizzes (AT2) are completed by students in-class. This strategy not only encourages students to attend and participate in face-to-face classes, but it also makes it more difficult for students to use AI to cheat as they are completed in a timed format that would make it hard to copy or write answers into ChatGPT

Further Reading

For more information about the design of this subject, please refer to the Course Handbook (here).