The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) defines student assessment as follows:
Any
processes that appraise an individual's knowledge, understanding,
abilities or skills. There are many different forms of assessment,
serving a variety of purposes. These include:
Promoting student learning by providing the student with feedback, normally to help improve his/her performance.
Evaluating student knowledge, understanding, abilities or skills.
Providing
a mark or grade that enables a student's performance to be established.
The mark or grade may also be used to make progress decisions.
Enabling
the public (including employers), and higher education providers, to
know that an individual has attained an appropriate level of
achievement that reflects the academic standards set by the awarding
institution and agreed UK norms, including the frameworks for higher
education qualifications. This may include demonstrating fitness to
practise or meeting other professional requirements.
Assessment
procedures are decided by the individual institution. Generally, taught
programmes involve a mixture of exams and coursework. Some require a
written dissertation at the end of the course. For further information,
see the 'Code of Practice for the Assurance of Academic Quality and
Standards in Higher Education. Section 6: Assessment of Students' (QAA,
2006x)
External examining provides one of the principal means
for maintaining nationally comparable standards within autonomous
higher education institutions, The assessment procedures include the
appointment of one or more external examiners for each subject. Their
role is to give an additional opinion on the performance of candidates
for degrees and thus ensure compatibility of standards between
universities, and that the examination system and the award of degree
classifications is fairly operated. These examiners are usually senior
members of the teaching staff of a similar department in another
university. For further information, see Section 4 of the Code of
Practice which covers external examining (QAA, 2004x).
Assessment
processes for research qualifications are different from those for
taught awards and usually include some kind of oral examination.
Although there is some variation between institutions and between
different types of research degree, the most common features of
research degree assessment procedures are as follows:
The student is examined on the basis of an appropriate body of work and an oral examination (viva voce).
As
a minimum, two appropriately qualified examiners are appointed for the
purpose, at least one of whom is external to the institution. Where
more than two examiners are appointed, the majority are generally from
outside the institution.
None of the student's supervisors should be appointed as an examiner.
It
is exceptional to appoint as internal or external examiner researchers
who have had a substantial direct involvement in the student's work or
whose own work is the focus of the research project.
Examiners submit separate, independent written reports before the viva and a joint report after it.
Institutions:
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
(QAA) Southgate House Southgate Street Gloucester
GL1 1UB England Tel.:+44 (0)1452 557000 Fax:+44 (0)1452 557070 E-mail: comms@qaa.ac.uk Website:http://www.qaa.ac.uk/
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