Assessments in the Time of Pandemic: A No-Panic Guide

in collaboration with Tim Burnett (Liberal Arts, University of Warwick)

We are living unprecedented (and unpredicted) times in academia. These times have required fast changes in how we do our teaching and will require the same for assessments. We completely understand how challenging this may be for all of us, and as a way to support colleagues going through this, we have written an article that explains how to shift from in-house exams to remote assessments.


We have written two versions of the article:

The first one offers a five-step guide on how to shift from in-house exams to remote assessments. We discuss advantages, disadvantages and potential challenges from a lecturer perspective. We give hints and tips on implementation. There is very little assumptions on the past (how you delivered your course, what type of assessments were set) as we focus on, given what we have done, what type of remote assessment we may want to set.

The second (shorter) version is for policy makers in Higher Education who may or may not have to change their assessments, but they do have to set guidelines for academics on how to re-write their assessments. While we understand that decisions have to be made very quickly, the choice of remote assessment should not be a quick fix. Students' marks, final degree classification and future employability depend on assessment and we owe to carefully think on what we want to assess. Universities' responses to this crisis will define their position and reputation in the next future, so our response has to (at least try) support student learning and development.

Both versions are available to download:

Version 1: Five-step guide for lecturers
Version 2: Policy brief for university policy-makers 

NEW: Presentation slides (added 28 April 2020)

If you want to chat about this, feel free to contact me/us.

Keep safe and connected! 

Steffie and Tim