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Firstly, consider the key principles of assessment as these will guide you to make the right decisions.

Please note: these are different to the Senate Education Committee's Principles of Assessment, which have been drawn up to express specific arrangements for assessment during the 2020/21 academic year, as a response to the COVID19 pandemic.

In this exceptional period, the following may also be useful:

Our Number 1 priority

Your students need to be absolutely clear that they will not be disadvantaged as a result of the current circumstances.

Clarity

Assessment should be fair, inclusive and accessible, however it is delivered.
Students need to be given clear, comprehensive information about any changes and instructions on all aspects of the alternative assessment, including issues such as required file formats and any revised marking criteria.
Feedback remains an important outcome of assessment – feedback is more important than ever. Feedback on formative activities can be a powerful way of preparing students for the summative assessment. It can clarify what is needed academically, help them check they understand what is involved in doing an online assessment, and increase their confidence at what can be a stressful time.

Change

Keep change manageable - if changing student assessment at short notice, consider the impact this may have on all students and ensure you do whatever you can to support the transition.
Make sure the assessment task works - we are not assessing students’ competence with the assessment method, we are only interested in assessing their learning by evaluating their academic performance against the module learning outcomes. Check your assessment design with someone else, and remember to discuss this with your students.
Ensure students have had an opportunity to try any new method of assessment, without grading.

People

Have a contingency plan in case you fall ill – liaise with someone else who understands your assessment and make sure they can access the submissions. Any plan you make should also work on the basis that colleagues may also be unavailable because of the situation.
When planning, account for the fact that some of your students might not have broadband at home or may have data caps. Design your assessment activities with low bandwidth and data limits in mind, e.g. wherever possible, don't ask students to create and submit large assignment files which will take a long time to upload.
Be conscious that some students, for a variety of reasons, may have challenges engaging with online assessment. You can devise strategies to address this including reducing the size of the task, increasing the time available for it, and removing unnecessary conditions that are not actually necessary for you to make a judgement on the work. Devise and agree alternative equivalent approaches where a universal approach still does not work for everyone.

Technical

Some students may not be able or comfortable to live-stream from their homes.
Focus on using the simplest solution for all concerned. Whilst we pride ourselves on our innovative community, we should not be introducing technically complex, challenging or risky alternatives now.
Remember that sometimes students own cheaper or lower-powered devices (slow, poor dim low-resolution screens). Ensure that the alternatives you plan to use will run on such low-spec machines.

Finally

Some assessments may have to be deferred to a later point, but consider the implications for Graduation. Final year student assessments need to be given the appropriate priority.

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