The Findings of an Assessment Audit: an NTFS Project Report

An Assessment Audit is described consisting of 47 questions, each being scored 0 to 4, by the module team depending on the extent to which the audit point was satisfied. Scores of 2 or less indicated unsatisfactory provision. Audits were carried out on 14 bioscience- or medicine- based modules in 13 universities.

There was great variability between modules in the hours spent by:

• teachers in direct contact with students (12 to 914); • teachers involved in the process of assessment (2 to 372); • students actually being assessed (2 to 60 hours per student); • students in the teaching and learning process (35 to 300).

The highest scoring module obtained 133 out of 188 (71%) with 11 out of 47 items scored at 2 or less while the lowest scoring module obtained 47% with 27 items scoring 2 or less. Features consistently poorly addressed were:

• consideration of learning objectives/assessment in other modules taken by the student; • consideration of consistency among multiple markers; • use of known mark sets to validate data processing; • availability of exemplar answers; • feedback on end-of-module assessments.

A common issue concerns the isolation of modules and module teams. This suggests the need for a strengthening of the course thread and emphasis on the totality of the student learning experience rather than the individual module. The audit provides a framework within which course teams can reflect on and improve the quality of the assessment in their module.