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Course Design Blueprint: Assessment Load

A balanced assessment load

Consideration should be given to the planning and scheduling of assessments in order to provide balanced workloads across the students' study time and to avoid over-assessment. Assessment workload is impacted by the size of the artefact being submitted (such as the word length of an essay or the duration of a presentation), by the amount of time students are expected to spend preparing for the assessment components, and by the complexity of the assessment tasks. The University expects all courses to adopt a consistent approach to assessment loadings, but also aligned with subject based expectations and practices.  Course teams should seek to balance the assessment loads across their course modules in proportion to the credits and weighting associated with the assessment components.

 

Rather than simply considering the size (word count, duration) of a planned assessment component, the overall assessment load of a single assessment component should also take into consideration:
  • The amount of background research students will need to engage with in order to enable them to complete the assessment.
  • The number of different components that the students will need to gain an understanding of.
  • The ‘thinking’ time that is involved in problem solving and critical analysis
  • Time to design, plan and complete practical work, including allowing for mistakes and experimentation where pertinent.
While it is simplest to think of a module's assessment load as the total of the assessment component workloads, in reality there may be many other aspects to consider:
  • Where students are tackling a type of assessment component for the first time, there may be significant learning and development that will be required in acquiring the requisite skills and developing confidence.
Many courses involve further demands on students' time and effort that need to be recognised when determining the appropriate assessment workloads that should be set. In particular:
  • Courses with significant periods in placement, particularly those where students are required to complete zero credited competency workbooks or portfolios, are likely to set lower overall assessment workloads within any levels including such placement requirements.
  • Courses which require students to spend considerable time developing and practicing technical, constructive, practical or creative skills will need to ensure that sufficient time is allowed for this key learning activity, and to avoid creating situations where students feel the need to start engaging with summative assessments before they have had sufficient time to develop their abilities in preparation for their engagement with the tasks involved.

Guidance for assessment load

While each course will develop its own assessment philosophy and strategy, there are some key considerations for all programmes. 

Key considerations for a balanced assessment load
Consistency All courses should ensure that there is a relatively even distribution of student workload across each level’s modules, with no modules having significantly more or less assessment workload than another. The course team’s approach to ensuring a consistent, balanced workload across modules and levels should be articulated in the validation document or, for reapprovals, in the developmental commentary.
Assessment preparation time There will be greater expectations of student’s independent and background research, and the use of critical and creative thinking, to produce work at higher levels and this is generally reflected in the time that students are expected to spend in assessment preparation. However, this will not always be the case, depending on the nature of the tasks set for students. For some level four work the amount of assessment preparation time may be significantly higher, whilst for the odd level six component the opposite may be the case. There is an expectation that assessment preparation will tend to take a significantly greater proportion of students’ time in later parts of courses.
Formative assessment  For many modules, particularly focussed on the development of practical skills or competencies, work on the summative assessment components forms an integral part of the planned learning experience. It is recognised that in such situations it is can be hard to differentiate between workload allocated for learning and that allocated for assessment preparation.
Other assessment types It is recognised that forms of assessment other than writing, presentations and exams are employed in courses. Where students are required to produce non-academic forms of writing such as reflective pieces, prose, or public facing documentation, set word lengths are often adjusted to reflect the form of writing. For courses within creative or technical subject areas, it is often difficult to quantify the workload associated with particular types of assessment component. In such cases, it will often be the hours of assessment preparation time that students are expected to require that is the better measure of workload.

Assessment benchmarks

 

Module type Typical preparation time Typical no, components Typical assessment load total Where more than one assessment component is set, word counts and time durations should be proportionally divided between the components according to relative weightings.
Recommended word count (if all assessment is written) Exam load (if exams are only means of assessment) Presentation duration (if presentations are only means of assessment)
20 credit 30-35 hours 1-2 Normally 1,500 words, with a maximum of 3,000 for one or two modules No more than two hours No more than 20 minutes
40 credit 60-70 hours 2-3 Normally 3,000 words, with a maximum of 4,500 No more than three hours 30-45 minutes

Note: Individual exams would not normally exceed three hours in duration. Individual presentation components would not normally exceed thirty minutes, and would typically be much shorter at Levels 3, 4 and 5

Module type Typical preparation time Typical no, components Typical assessment load total Where more than one assessment component is set, word counts and time durations should be proportionally divided between the components according to relative weightings.
Recommended word count (if all assessment is written) Exam load (if exams are only means of assessment) Presentation duration (if presentations are only means of assessment)
20 credit 50 hours 1-2 3,000 words 3 hours 30 minutes
40 credit 100 hours 2-3 6,000 words 5 hours 60 minutes

Note: Individual exams would not normally exceed three hours in duration. Individual presentation components would not normally exceed thirty minutes, and would typically be much shorter at Levels 3, 4 and 5

Module type Typical preparation time Typical no, components Typical assessment load total Where more than one assessment component is set, word counts and time durations should be proportionally divided between the components according to relative weightings.
Recommended word count (if all assessment is written) Exam load (if exams are only means of assessment) Presentation duration (if presentations are only means of assessment)
20 credit 60-70 hours 1-2 3,000 words 3 hours 30 minutes
40 credit 120-140 hours 2-3 6,000 words 5 hours 60 minutes
40 credit project or dissertation     10,000 to 12,000 words    

 

Module type Typical preparation time Typical no, components Typical assessment load total Where more than one assessment component is set, word counts and time durations should be proportionally divided between the components according to relative weightings.
Recommended word count (if all assessment is written) Exam load (if exams are only means of assessment) Presentation duration (if presentations are only means of assessment)
20 credit 60-70 hours 1 5,000 words 3 hours 30 minutes
40 credit 120-140 hours 1-2 10,000 words 5 hours 60 minutes
60 credit taught postgraduate dissertation     10,000 to 15,000 words