Assessment design

In forum discussion, one of the colleague suggested a great assessment design. Gemma designed this especially for introductory course, but I think this can be applied to many unit generally and I will refer for my next semester.

Gemma
' With my area of an introductory course, I think one very important part of assessment is teaching the students how to do the assessment.  This isn't necessarily more important than other aspects, but I feel it is often overlooked.  
Teaching 'how', will make assessment a lot less stressful for the students, and you will then be able to assess how well they have learnt the content, as opposed to how well they can deal with technical trouble, or how cluey they are as to finding help.  This includes
1)  Examples where appropriate - give the student an example of a good essay in the same or different topic, and point out why it was good in terms of content and structure.
2)  Practice in the means of assessment - such as practice quizzes to allow the students to know what it is like and what to expect, especially in online assessment and where technology is involved.
3)  Adequate feedback not just about the content, but about how they went about it - tell them if they demonstrate good content knowledge, but should just check the formatting guide.
4)  Ask for and listen to suggestions - students will tell you what they need help with, and as a teacher you can say that it is OK to ask not only about the content, but about the means, how technology works etc.  We are embedded in this every day and don't always know what a particular cohort of students don't know until we ask.