4. Creating and improving projects/ assignments

Designing good assessments has four stages: 

• Making a blue print (a schematic overview); 
• Writing the test itself; 
• Writing an answer model/rubric; 
• Getting feedback on step 1, 2 and 3 from peers. 

For exams and assignments, the process is very much alike:

Table 11. Comparing design process for assignments and exams

One characteristic of assignments is that the assignment simulates a situation in the work field, and that learning activities and assessment activities are combined into one. Therefore, one could consider that assignments should be constructively aligned within themselves (see Figure 10).

In case of an assignment, this triangle consists of objectives, tasks/instructions and the assessment criteria. These should be aligned. Furthermore, you must make sure that students get feedback on each and every criterion in some form, before they deliver their final product. The feedback might consist of feedback on an early version of a report, or on a pitch, but also on separate exercises (that focus on one or more criteria), or even peer feedback. As long as the students have a reliable indication of on what level they are performing per criterion.

In chapter 2 in Designing assignments used for assessment (Van de Veen. 2016), an explanation and a step-by-step tutorial of how to design the blueprint of an assignment is explained. This results in an assignment specification form (Figure 2.5, Van de Veen, 2016, pp. 38-39, and a consistency check table (p. 56). The goal of this table is to enable us to check whether:

• All learning outcomes are fully covered by the criteria;
• The division of points between the criteria matches the importance of the criteria and the corresponding learning outcomes;
• Criteria that do not match any learning objective are removed or moved to the ‘prerequisite’ row, where the knock-out criteria are grouped; and
• The amount of supervision is appropriate for the learning objectives.

Following is a slightly simplified version of the assignment specification form and consistency check table. This is an example of a consistency check table for an imaginary project where students have to design a foot-bridge over the Schie canal in Delft that can withstand a hurricane for first year mechanical engineering students. Each column represents a product that they need to deliver, or in each cell, you can find the criteria that they will be assessed on.

Table 12. Example consistency check table for an imaginary 1st year bachelor project in which students have to design a foot-bridge.

While using a consistency check table, please notice that the columns are called ‘tasks’ in the book. In general, the columns usually contain the following:

• Deliverables: objects that need to be handed in, for example, a report or a piece of coding; or that has a date at which they are presented, for example, a presentation, poster presentation, pitch);
• Attitudes, skills or behaviours: attitudes, skills and behaviours that are (only) tested during the period that students are working on the assignment or project (e.g. participation, critical attitude, independence, preparation, laboratory skills, programming skills, group work skills).

4.2. Assignment description

Chapter 3 of Van de Veen (2016) discusses how to write a clear and motivating assignment description. Section 3.3 contains very valuable tips. She proposes a format for writing an assignment description, that forces you to include all important parts of such a description. On page 62-63 of Van de Veen (2016), you will find a good example. In 4.4.b ‘Checklist for assignments’, you will find the checklist that may help you to formulate your assignment.

4.4. Checklists for assignments

In this section you will find three checklist that may help you to improve your consistency check table, your assignment, and your rubric. Use these to make sure you include everything that has to be included, and to identify opportunities for improvement. Keep in mind that some points on the checklist may be more or less important for your particular assignment. Furthermore, you probably will have to make a trade-off between practicability on the one hand, and validity and reliability on the other hand.

4.5. Group skills: to assess or not to assess?

If you have decided to have your students do your assignments in groups, there are two questions to answer:

• Do you assess the students on soft skills like ‘group skills’?
• Do you train them on group skills?

Even if you decide that you do not want to assess group skills, group performance may be limited by problems with group skills. Therefore, group skills will influence the grade, whether you like it or not. This will limit the validity and reliability of your grade. And more importantly, it might hinder learning. Not all students naturally possess group-work skills. Therefore, they need your help, feedback and guidance.
Here are some common subjects that group members might have different opinions on, which will negatively influence group performance:

• Levels of ambition (for example the desirable grade),
• Communication standards,
• Collaboration,
• Time needed to complete the work,
• Working hours
• Choosing a place to work,
• Decision making, and
• Problem solving.

You can have your students discuss these things openly during a kick-off meeting, and to reach an agreement before starting the project. You can have the students monitor each other’s behaviour using Scorion. They can also give feedback on each other’s work using Feedback Fruits and Presto.

If you choose to grade the group process, you can do so on the level of an individual, or on the level of the group. In both cases, you must make sure that you have enough observations to base your grade on. For individual grading, you might grade the student’s behaviour in the group, her evaluation of her group’s behaviour, and the quality of the student’s own skills, needed for the project. You can also evaluate at the group level yourself, or give the group responsibility for this process. In that case, you could evaluate, for example:

• The product/content (product, report, presentation, interview, portfolio, customer evaluation),
• The process/planning (project plan, planning, logbook, criteria list, study contract, portfolio, report), and
• The cooperation (evaluation report, individual reflection report, criteria list, process report, presence list, peer evaluation).