Simassessment: enhancing academics' understanding of assessment through computer simulation

Assessment of students is commonly seen as having two purposes: providing students with feedback on their progress (formative), and making judgements about an individual student's fulfilment of subject objectives (summative). Not so commonly understood by academics however, is the degree to which students' perception of assessment drives their learning. Many years of research have highlighted the fact that students respond to their perception of assessment in terms of what they learn and in the way in which they approach their learning. These results have been discussed in a plethora of conference papers, journal articles and books devoted to good practice in assessment. This work however, goes largely unnoticed by the majority of academics, many of whom continue to design assessment tasks which mirror their own experiences as students of large summative examinations. This paper describes a project which seeks to draw academics' attention to good practice in assessment and to enhance their understanding of the impact of a range of issues related to assessment design on student behaviour and approaches to learning. The authors have developed an online assessment simulator, so that academics can try out different assessment approaches, and see first hand the ways in which students might respond. The simulator also demonstrates the links between assessment design, and student learning and behaviour.