At an institutional level, there is a recognition that over-stretched resources result in limited attention to assessment procedures and practices:
We want to look at the numbers and at the same time consider how best to do the assessment. Now you realise that for many lecturers the only possibility is to go for tick-box objective type of questions. While these might ease lecturers' stress a little, if you look at the other side, it is also not very good for student in terms of if you are looking at how they are going to develop their English, construction, grammar etc. It's a problem when they are having to write essays later on. So it has led to some of the problems we see, when they are made to write projects, the problems that we encounter are because they had had no practice. We are overstretching our lecturers. So that is a problem, lecturers are over taxed; the facilities are not too well equipped to cope. The problems will come.
From a student's point of view, Evelyn, assessment is poorly organised, lacks transparency and rarely chimes with her own view of her work:
Well, one particular incident that made me so bad was the fact that things are not done the way it should be done. For instance, where you write an exam and the exam is supposed to be posted on time so that you know your weakness. You wait and wait and the results are not coming. You don't even know whether you did well or not. So how can you improve? You cannot - until the results come- and wow! I've failed! or wow! I've passed! Then you could move from that. So at least that has to be solved so that students know exactly where they are moving towards.
Many students believed that lecturers displayed favouritism and preferential treatment, and that this would manifest in changing examination results:
When I was outside of the university people have been saying some of the lecturers favoured the students and I didn't know it was true till I found it myself in the school about this results on notice board and some will go to the lecturers and they will just change it for them just like that. ... the lecturer will always come just complaining that we like complaining...if you don't take care he will mark you down. Yeah. So after that we don't even go to the Dean of students again. We just keep quiet.
Some students felt they had reason to question the credibility of assessment processes that seemed to contradict their own observations of their peers' performance:
And it was as if some people were getting some grades which to me I think they don't deserve. Some don't even write exams but when you go to the notice board you find grades there - which are even better than those of us who sat down to write the exam. And I think it's absurd! How can they just make… some people - you never see them in the lecture room. You don't see them… you don't see them for exams and at the end of the day, they even get better grades. And … it's like: How do they make it?
Complaint procedures for students who felt they had been unfairly assessed were perceived to be limited and ultimately to the detriment of students' interests:
Procedurally, that's the rule the university, it is there. Fine, but for me in particular I think it is of no use because the system is in place meanwhile when you want to use it, you become afraid and you don't use it. So, for me, it is useless. It should not be there at all because if you go and the perception is that the lecturer may victimize you later, then they should not put that thing in place in the first place.
Discussion questions
- What assessment issues are raised in the quotations above?
- What are the implications for teaching and learning practices?
- What strategic action do the institutions need to take to strengthen assessment?