The way in which we assess our students at university has a big impact on their learning as well as on our teaching. It conveys to students strong signals about what we value in our subject both in terms of micro-skills (specific skills related to mathematical topics such as the ability to carry out a particular calculation implement a particular proof technique or apply a given result) and macro skills (generalisable or transferrable skills such as the ability to prove work with abstract structures or present arguments clearly and concisely).
In this paper we report on a survey of assessment methods across universities in the UK aimed at determining exactly what assessment methods are most common what alternatives there are to the most common methods and whether different areas of mathematics are assessed in different ways.
The general education literature on assessment in higher education has repeatedly stressed the importance of the introduction of innovative forms of assessment [1 2] either to assess the core skills of the subject studied (in our case mathematics) or other skills such as those deemed to enhance students’ employability. In the mathematics education literature there also have been calls to employ more innovative forms of assessment aimed at testing both micro and macro skills [3]. These include posters projects presentations and mathematical essay writing [4 5 6]. However in order to understand the impact of calls to innovate we need to understand existing forms and patterns of assessment. So we decided to investigate different types of assessment methods in use across a range of UK mathematics departments.
We are aware that all mathematics departments use some type of formative assessment to provide them and their students with feedback on developing understandings of the mathematical topics being studied the research evidence suggests that the higher the stakes involved in assessment the larger the impact on students’ approaches to learning [7 8]. Our own experience also suggests that even a relatively small number of marks assigned to a piece of work transform students’ engagement and effort. Thus in exploring this issue we focused on assessment which directly impacts on the degree classification; that is we restricted our view to summative assessment.
