Assessment methods at top 10 unis - movement away from traditional exams?

[Springflowers1]

Really interested in getting feedback and experiences on this for humanities/social sciences at top unis as DC2 is in yr12 and I think this is something we should be more aware of when evaluating options and comparing unis. For context DC1 is at Oxbridge doing an exam heavy essay subject with very little scope for coursework or other forms of assessment. First 2 years is all very stressful traditional exams and 3rd year is 3/4 traditional exams plus a dissertation or similar. Uni did do 5hr open book exams for a while after covid but reverted back to exam halls due to concerns about cutting and pasting of old essays and use of AI.

First time around I wasn't fully aware that so many other top unis now employed many diverse ways of assessing students and that often the majority of exams were open book eg 24hr ones?

Those of you with DC doing essay subjects at high ranking unis, how have they found these alternative modes of assessment, particularly 24hr open book exams? Does the removal of the need to memorise everything significantly reduce stress levels? It makes alot of sense to me - nothing in the world of work is about memorisation of vast amounts of information, but I know it's not straightforward because of issues with AI.

My DS has just finished a STEM degree at a high ranking uni.
Assessments were as follows:
Regular exams (one for each module at least - some were just exam-based)
Open book essays to do at home within a short timeframe (2 days, but each subject also had an exam element). These were quite tough.
Dissertation
Group work around devising an experiment (this was awful as DS was the only one who took it seriously in his group - and his friend in another group did all the work). It was ever thus!

There’s no way his exams were a memory test as they had to apply knowledge and design a small experiment at the end.,

So a real mix. This was all third-year assessments but the second year was worth 25% of the degree mark as well.

One problem with 24 hour exams- I work with a ND student who will literally sit there for the 24 hours- I speak from experience trying to dissuade. Agree with the previous points about exams mainly testing memory and not reflecting the way we work today. We need to be flexible and relevant in our forms of assessments to match the workplace.

This. When my boss asks me to write a policy document I have accesss to the acts it’s based on . Doesn’t mean I don’t have knowledge or that I’m not using my common sense or brain just means I can refer back to the content in the acts for reference . Same as an open book exam it’s about the thinking skills involved and how well your work is referenced. Otherwise everyone would get full marks for every essay or open book exam they did ! Makes sense for humanities . Same as presentations for part of the mark in some modules . Every method gives you a different skill.

My son has just finished his History degree at Birmingham. His course was assessed almost entirely by essays and a dissertation in the final year. There were a couple of exams but they were the ‘take home and do in 24 hours’ type rather than trad.

I agree traditional exams may well be good preparation for that specific job. For most of us, we do not have that extreme level of time pressure. In my office job, I might have had a manager ask me at the start of the day to do an 8-hour task by the end the end of the day, but it normally would not have mattered whether I finished at 5pm or midnight.

My DD’s “24 hour” exam at Durham this year was a three hour exam that could be started at any point within a 24 hour period but then ended three hours later. Are they all not like that? I presumed it was to help manage study spaces?

DD is history grad from Exeter. All exams were essay based with a time frame to complete. Makes absolute sense, history is not about memorising the dates things happened but understanding the context in which they occurred and why they occurred in that way. That requires serious research from multiple sources, and then using that to inform your response.
Giving students the time to carry out that independent research, and then formulate and articulate their response is what higher education should be about in my opinion.

Conversely, subjects requiring detailed specialist knowledge eg engineering, sciences, medicine, absolutely these should be in person traditional style exams because you are testing knowledge learned and the ability to apply that knowledge to solve a problem.
The final year project is the opportunity to research and apply that knowledge in new ways. (Based on the experiences of 2 DS who studied engineering at Southampton and Warwick respectively).

My son is starting at UCL in September. He deliberately chose a course which mixed course work with exams. Warwick , for example, doesn’t have any exams for the same course.

UEA is coursework only

My DS did history ; graduated last year. No sit in a hall exams - 'take home ' exams. I can assure you they needed to remember things and no AI was allowed, or used. The dissertation is very challenging. Hums degrees demand research skills and clear academic writing.

24 hours actaully isn't really 24 hours. They do sleep! It's actually very pressured. Some modules were tested through presentations or on essays written over six week periods. This is also not confined to hums, arts and soc sci.

This is not hugely different to when I was at York in the early 90s where we had 8 hour and 24 hour exams and modular assessment.

Students get plenty of practice in sodding high pressure , high stakes, memory test exams at school...

To add, they are still making 'decisions' at pace in 24 hour exams - selecting, researching, applying, editing copy, analysing, synthesising.

Also, it reinforces workplace deadlines. Hand it in one minute late - you fail.

This was pre-AI. I am not sure if it is the same now.

@ProseccoPie DD did 27 exams for GCSE and 9 for her A levels. She was very used to exams but preferred course work.

She has gone into a job where she has had to do lots of exams and make quick leadership and management decisions that could be life changing/ending.

She also has a role in the community where she needs to process lots of information quickly and make life-changing decisions.

Doing coursework at a top university has not held her back in life.

DD starts her Marketing related degree in September. No exams, it is assessed by output only - such as materials, displays, presentations, group work etc. In the final year they can choose a dissertation style or a big 'live client' brief. I think that is all much more job relevant than exam format - but I guess that is down to the subject. As she is a real exam hater I'm glad there are subjects that are taught like that as she would never have decided to go otherwise.

Dc at Warwick has had end to end essays this term and is now in an open book exam period. It feels like a marathon not a sprint and I can assure anyone they definitely feel under pressure. His housemates and him all seem to work hard constantly and fit in their lives around it. I think it definitely teaches them about work life balance, more so than cramming for a few weeks for a couple of 3 hour memory tests.

Thanks again everyone. I totally agree that handwritten 3hr (3+3/4 hr in my DC1’s case with exam accommodations) exam hall assessments have little additional benefit in terms of skills needed in the future working environment. I also think that being able to spend revision time pre exams focusing on knowledge consolidation and understanding in humanities, rather than also having to memorise everything, has got to reduce stress levels. As a PP has already said - they have plenty of practise doing that at school.

AI use though is a another matter and I can see that this may push things back the other way again.

Social Sciences no timed exams for final degree classification . Two pieces of untimed work for each module (usually essay but included policy briefings, posters, methods plans and oral presentations) and a dissertation (10-15k) words. Think some modules also gave small percentage of marks for reflexive diaries of seminars.

Suited my DD and has found transition to work in her degree area absolutely fine.

If students actually do coursework and other assessments that students do outside the exam hall they are great. The problem with this now is AI. Academics sometimes do not appreciate and administrations may not want to recognise that:
*Free to use AI software can produce undergraduate work that will receive reasonable marks in response to very direct prompts. Even with limited/no editing it can be of an acceptable standard.
*Academics are not as good at recognising AI work as they think the are. Students editing and checking for 'tells' make this even harder.
*No AI detecting software has no false negatives or positives.

*Upholding AI cases of academic impropriety is challenging to say the least.
*Some assessments may be harder to respond to with AI, but this can skew the type of assessment and academics may overestimate how they can make assessments robust to AI.
It really is a challenging and quite depressing landscape to design assessments in. People may say well AI is a tool they will use as graduates. That is a bit like saying you dont need to learn fundamental maths because we have calculators. If you never learn to evaluate and understand evidence independently you cant properly evaluate AI outputs.

There are pluses and minuses to exams and coursework. For administrations in person exams have the big minus of being practically difficult and resource intensive. In addition to just finding the rooms and staffing the invigilation responding to reasonable adjustments is challenging. Modules can have hundreds of students with say 20% needing a variety if adjustments. Coursework or non-in person 'exams' alleviates the majority of these issues. Students also tend not to favour in person exams. There are lots of factors that push unis away from them.

I think worries about AI are slightly overblown. I don’t think the vast majority would use it to write their essays out of fear of being found out. I also heard a professor give a talk recently and she said a substantial proportion of her students refuse to use AI in any capacity on ethical grounds. They don’t want to contribute to climate crisis and in particular the use of water that AI generates. I think we underestimate young people.

On a pragmatic level in response to @Springflowers1 flowers query nearly all unis will have module links on their course pages. They will often link to.the module catalogue or similar which will show the assessments. Modules and assessments may change, but you can get an idea of the current state of play.

That is a very positive view of young people and human nature. I hope it is true. I suppose it depends what proportion use AI and what an acceptable proportion of AI using students would be. In a high stakes situation it can be a tempting resource.

I think that’s a very generous viewpoint - AI use is rife at university.

As mentioned above, it is very difficult to challenge AI use and at least some universities won't use AI checkers at all.

A friend marking an end of course assessment noted that everyone had submitted work of a 2.1 or 1st standard which had never ever happened in their 20 years of teaching (which in their words "was impossible") and there was not the same diversity of analysis and examples there had been in the pre-final submission work submitted for feedback mid-term. Their supervisor's response: prove it, and no we won't pay to get access to the uni AI checker. All the students got their chatgpt 2.1s and 1sts. (The change has been rapid over just the last 12 months.)

Not at uni level, but I know one high achieving school that has stopped offering dissertation style EPQs altogether and will only supervise artefacts.

Everyone in education knows what's going on.

But you can learn a lot from the internet. DS is doing a software engineering apprenticeship and if he doesn't know how to do something at work then the first thing he does is look it up. He can't go running to his boss every time he's unsure how to do something. He doesn't use AI at work because it's not considered secure and he's quite anti it because it's so often wrong.

Common sense and performing well under pressure both come from real life experience IMO, I certainly didn't learn either just from doing some exams.

I agree, there will be loads of students utilising AI. Back in the day when I worked teaching ESL I would have students coming to me expecting me to write their essays. No need now when AI can do it.