Examination and Assessment in Science and Technology

This course provides teachers at the faculty with concrete support in developing examination, be it written or oral, theoretical or practical, formative or summative. Since examination plays a crucial role in students’ learning, it is essential to design it carefully.

The course content has a broad span, covering several kinds of examination, all closely connected to our teaching in mathematics, science and technology. It is tied together and enriched by the participants’ own experiences and by insights from research in university teaching and subject didactics. The aim of the course is to provide the participants with the means to reflect more deeply on, and develop, their own teaching practice.

The course is open to everyone with a basic teacher training course (5 weeks) or thorough experience of teaching. All individual seminars and workshops are also open to all teaching staff at the faculty. The language of the course is English.

Intended learning outcomes

The participant should be able to:

• Design constructively aligned and pedagogically sound assessments 
• Analyse and justify assessment design decisions considering educational theory, available resources and university regulations
• Critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of assessment practices in science and technology

Seminars with assignments

Each participant chooses at least six of the ten thematic seminars below. In addition to participating in the selected seminars, course participants will also complete shorter assignments directly coupled to the seminar themes. These assignments will be discussed during the compulsory follow-up seminars at the end of each semester.

Design of examination task

As part of the examination you should design or redesign an examination task from one your own courses. For this assignment you should submit a document including the following three parts:

1. an example of a newly designed, or significantly revised, examination that align with the ideas presented during the course. If the material is redesigned, you should clearly mark the changes compared to the previous version.
2. a description of the learning goals that are covered and how the examination will be graded.
3. a self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses of the examination.

As you should include insights from the course, the assignment should be submitted towards the end of the course (between October 1 and December 15). Your submission will then be discussed in groups, with two course participants and one teacher. You will thus both receive feedback on your own work and gain insight into another assessment practice by providing feedback. Groups will be assigned during the fall and the schedule for the 2-hour discussion session will be agreed upon within the group.

Language

The language of the course is English.

Seminars and workshops that can be included in the course