ASSESSMENT: THE DEVELOPING AND TESTING OF A TRIAL EXAM IN A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY FIELD USING BOTH FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE EVALUATION
Year: 2016
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Ahmed Kovacevic, Lyndon Buck, Christian Tollestrup, Kaare Eriksen, Nis Ovesen
Author: Petersen, Dorthe Fiona; Mathiasen, Anne Marie; Lerche, Tifli
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1Assistant Professor, Copenhagen School of Technology and Design, 2Project Manager, Copenhagen School of Technology and Design, 3Assistant Professor, Copenhagen School of Technology and Design
Section: Assessment
Page(s): 430-435
ISBN: 978-1-904670-62-9
Abstract
The purpose of this research project is to redesign an existing 1st year exam at The Copenhagen School
of Technology and Design to enhance the students’ vocational competency and hence to enhance the
students’ employability. Furthermore, there was a wish to make the exam focus more explicitly on the
students’ innovative competencies. This generates a need for guidelines and assessment tools in order
to assess the innovation competences of the students. An exam form that combines both formative and
summative evaluation has been developed and tested. Additional tool/concepts have been developed
to support the process. This includes an innovation manifest, innovation taxonomies for the levels 4, 5
and 6 plus two development workshops. The overall applied process method used is The Experimental
Cycle. Methods used include observations, qualitative e-mail interviews, open questionnaires,
reflection logs and document analysis.
Important findings include the development of an innovation manifest, which resulted in a greater
focus on innovation in the assessment of the students the following year. By the use of efficient
didactical methods, the students were exposed to hands-on learning, a risk-taking learning
environment, short pitches and a space for evaluation and reflection. The students and examiners
found that the combination of a formative and summative exam gave a more fair assessment. The
innovation taxonomy was found useful to evaluate and grade the students. These results can be useful
to educations, which work with inter-disciplinarily tests and/or need to define and test the students’
innovation competences.
Keywords: Formative assessment, exam, innovation taxonomy, assessment tools, EQF.