Option 3: Redesign your assessment - Swap summative for the formative

If you think that students would greatly benefit from doing the assessment even if there is a higher risk of IA misconduct then you could consider making this assessment more formative in nature. In deciding on this consider the following questions: 

  • Does the ‘problematic’ assessment test the skills that feed into/ closely link to another assessment? Or can it be redesigned to do that? 
  • Does it assess ILOs that can be formally assessed via another assessment on the module/ programme? 

The role of formative assessment is to support student learning. These can be really helpful if they are designed in such a way that students’ either get to practice the skills tested later on in the module or what they do for formative directly fits into a higher stakes summative assessment. As the purpose of the formative is learning, whether students use AI or not should not matter at this point.  

Formative assessments can have small credit attached to incentivize students to do it, however this incentive can also come from the design itself, I.e. if students feel that engaging in an assessment is valuable, they will be more likely to do it. If you do decide to attach a small credit ensure that students understand the difference in weighting and it is clear to them how much effort should be allocated to each assessment on the module. Some more information on formative and summative assessments ca be found in the videos below. 

When deciding to remove the assessment remember to: 

  • Follow the relevant QA processes 
  • Consult students and other stakeholders about the changes 
  • Redistribute the weighting of other assessments 
  • Brief other tutors on the module about the changes and how it impacts preparation and marking 

Watch these video's

What is summative and formative assessment?

What is summative and formative assessment?

What is summative and formative assessment?

Kate Ippolito, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

Disadvantages of formative assessment

Disadvantages of formative assessment

Kate Ippolito, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

The value of attaching credit to formative assessments

The value of attaching credit to formative assessments

Kate Ippolito, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

Achieving good balance between formative and summative

Achieving good balance between formative and summative

Kate Ippolito, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship