A compulsory continuous performance assessment involves clearly delineated tasks which must be completed within the course unit framework and graded individually. There are the following possibilities for the marking of compulsory continuous performance assessment tasks:
a. The compulsory continuous performance assessment task needs not be passed on its own; it is awarded a grade which counts proportionally towards the total course unit grade.
b. The compulsory continuous performance assessment task must be passed on its own; it is assessed on a pass/fail basis.
c. The compulsory continuous performance assessment task must be passed on its own and counts proportionally towards the total course unit grade; it is graded (grades of 4 and above signify a pass; grades below 4 signify failure).
Not completing or failing to pass a compulsory continuous performance assessment task means that the corresponding course unit cannot be passed. If students in this situation do not deregister from the final examination their failure of the course unit will be officially decreed as a «no show». If students fail or do not complete a compulsory continuous performance assessment task, lecturers must inform them of this in writing before the deregistration deadline.
The share contributed by graded compulsory continuous performance assessment to the total course unit grade may not exceed 50%.
VI.2.D.c. Committee on Teaching, Learning and Assessment
The Committee on Teaching, Learning and Assessment coordinates efforts to Strengthen teaching and learning on campus and mediate between the expectations of accreditation bodies and the norms of faculty. It reports regularly to faculty about what we know about teaching and learning at Brandeis and trends in outcomes over time. The committee also works with different academic units such as the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Committee for the Support of Teaching, the Experiential Learning Committee and the Rabb School’s eLearning Division to communicate and facilitate cross-fertilization.
The committee is chaired by the provost or his/her/their designee and is composed of seven faculty as well as staff members invited by the provost. One faculty member will represent each of the four divisions in Arts and Sciences, the Brandeis International Business School, the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, and the Rabb School of Continuing Studies. The executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning will serve ex officio.
This committee will advise the provost and make recommendations to the Committee on Academic Standards and Policy.
Student representatives, selected by their peers, may serve on the committee in a nonvoting capacity at the discretion of the chair.
The first group of faculty selected for this committee will serve two- or three-year terms, decided at random by the chair of the committee. Faculty selected for this committee after the first group will all be selected for three-year terms.
One of the many responsibilities that falls to school district leaders is whether to use an interim assessment—one that’s given every couple of months—to measure student progress.
These tests can serve several different purposes, including predicting performance on state exams and identifying subsets of skills for which students might need support.
Picking the right tool is a high-stakes decision. Teachers may use the results of these tests to adjust their instruction or determine which students will receive interventions. But it can also be hard to identify exactly what test will best suit a district’s specific purposes.
Last year, the nonprofit curriculum reviewer EdReports announced that it would start releasing reviews of interim assessments as well, judging their technical quality and usability. These kinds of outside evaluations are hard to come by right now, as they’re often proprietary, created by private companies.
But earlier this year, the organization put the plan on hold indefinitely, because not enough assessment companies agreed to participate.
It was disappointing news for Christine Droba, the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning in North Palos School District 117 in Palos Hills, Ill.
“An external review would be huge,” she said, removing some of the burden of assessing validity and reliability of these tests from teachers’ and other educators’ shoulders.
Droba and North Palos superintendent Jeannie Stachowiak spoke with Education Week about how their district chooses interim assessments, and what they did after discovering that the test they were using wasn’t aligned with the year-end test in Illinois. This state test is used for federal accountability purposes.
They also shared their advice for other school leaders wondering about the alignment of interim assessments to their teaching.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Droba: We use our interim assessments as a tool to predict how students are going to do on the state assessment. It is something that we use to identify which students need enrichment, which students need additional support in terms of: Are they going to be ready for the end of year benchmark?
We look at, where’s grade-level proficiency? How close is it to our target? How many students are below that level? What do they need to do to get to the end of the year benchmark? Which students are going to start intervention? That’s our fall assessment. By the winter, we track progress from fall to winter, and then revise any plans that we have—if we need to do more support in this area, or maybe less support in this area.
And then the spring testing session is really done to track growth from fall to spring, and we also use the spring assessment to continuously make sure that the interim assessment is aligned to the state assessment. We’re always looking at: Are these numbers showing us the same thing?
Stachowiak: [The assessment we were using] is not directly aligned to Illinois State Standards.
We had teachers, understandably, taking a look at some of the things on the [interim] assessment and beefing up their instruction in those areas. However, those were not areas that were target areas for assessment on a state assessment. So they were working very hard to make sure students met standards on an interim assessment that was really not aligned.
We started to look for other potential assessments that would be better aligned, which was when we made the switch [to a new interim test]. We have a data coordinator in the district who meets with our leadership team, constantly. And we are looking to do a data dive to make sure that [the new interim assessment] is a better predictor for our students.
Droba: We worked with our data coordinator to take the assessment from the spring and then the [state] assessment data for the same group of kids. And he ran a correlational study to figure out what was the correlation between the two data sets. I believe that number was around 0.7 or 0.8, which is very high. He was basically saying that these numbers are correlated.
That was similar to the research that [the interim assessment provider] already presented to us. Their correlations were a little bit higher than what he found with our data set. But it was still high enough that we were like, “Yeah, let’s move forward, this is still good. It’s in alignment.”
Droba: I would say that you need to have clarity on your goals and priorities. First and foremost, we made it very, very clear that the state test is what’s measuring the state standards. It’s what our whole curriculum and system is built on.
[The interim assessment] is a tool to predict how kids are going to do on the state assessment. So we have very clear priorities. If you don’t have that, it can be very confusing. Which assessment? What am I looking for? What’s the purpose of the assessment? You really need to have clarity, first on the purpose of the assessment and how you want to use it.
Stachowiak: We value the state assessment, because we believe it measures what our teachers teach and what our students should learn. And then based on that value, we create goals for the school district. We share those goals with the Board of Education, obviously. We share those goals with the teachers, so that at all of our professional learning, community meetings, everything that we’re doing with our staff, that’s the goal in mind—to make sure that the students are going to achieve those goals that we expect.
If you don’t have that goal in mind, and that alignment, it’s really difficult to make sure that everyone is sharing and doing the same thing and valuing not only the state assessments, but then whatever interim assessments you’re using to measure.
Droba: An external review would be huge.
A lot of what we get is from the company itself. They’re going to supply us this report that says, “Yes, it’s aligned to IAR. Yes, we do that.” They do their own research. Having an external reviewer would help just make sure that their methods were valid, that everything meets the high-quality standards that you would expect.
We read through the reports that they provided to us, and then we piloted the program to make sure that in practice, it was what we wanted it to be. But having the external review would just provide a set of eyes that was not the company.
We work with teachers on our review committee, and they know the usability of it. But to have a research company explore the validity and reliability of an assessment, that just allows [teachers] to review that instead of having to actually do the review themselves.
Cambridge Assessment International Education prepares school students for life, helping them develop informed curiosity and a lasting passion for learning.
It is part of Cambridge Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge.
Cambridge University Press - also a department of the University of Cambridge - shares every teacher's passion and commitment to providing the best educational experience for learners that will last their entire lifetime.
Our aim is to provide students with the tools and confidence to thrive in their chosen fields of study, from Primary and Cambridge IGCSE to Cambridge International A Level. Our diverse selection of books and digital resources will make sure students are in a position to perform to the best of their ability in their Cambridge examinations.
Cambridge University Press works with Cambridge Assessment International Education and experienced authors, to produce high-quality endorsed AS and A Level textbooks, Cambridge IGCSE books and digital resources that support Cambridge teachers and encourage Cambridge learners worldwide.
Explore our range of resources for Cambridge Assessment International Education.
This annual award recognizes outstanding contributions, commitments, and efforts that academic and academic support programs have made to their improvement through full-cycle assessment.
The selected program will receive $1,000 to be used to advance its work on assessment, teaching and learning.
Programs may self-nominate for this award by sending an email to the Senior Associate Provost, Carolyn Haynes, haynesca@miamioh.edu, or the Provost Office, provost@miamioh.edu by December 8, 2023. Members of the University Assessment Fellows Committee may nominate programs also. The primary documents used for review are the annual assessment reports submitted for the previous three years.
For self-nominations, departments may submit a one-page memo that explains how the departmental assessment activity meets the selection criteria.
The University Assessment Fellows Committee reviews these documents and then selects and notifies the winner by the end of February. Award winners are recognized at the annual awards recognition event held in March.
Clear articulation of assessed learning or other outcomes
Clear alignment between outcomes and selected assessment measures
Use of multiple measures (direct, indirect)
Presentation of collected evidence
Involvement of key stakeholders (faculty, staff) in the assessment process
Use of assessment results for meaningful educational improvement
Educational improvement strategies tracked over time
Examples of activities that can be supported by the award funds include but are not limited to:
Assessment retreat
Faculty meetings or workshops on teaching and learning
Assessment consultant
Travel to assessment-related conference
Professional development funds for faculty member leading program-level assessment planning
Student employment for assessment assistance
Software to support assessment processes
Books or other resources on assessment
Incentives for students to engage in assessment processes (focus groups, surveys)
Department of Global & Intercultural Studies (BA, American Studies; BA, Latin American, Latino/a, and Caribbean Studies)
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (MS, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering)
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (BA, Psychological Science)
Department of Art (Art Education)
Department of Microbiology (Undergraduate education)
Department of Family Science and Social Work (M.A. Social Work)
Project Dragonfly (Department of Biology)
Department of Political Science
Department of Engineering Technology
In 2022, Cambridge Assessment International Education issued grades to 460,000 students from more than 5,400 schools in 147 countries. After a year of ever-closer collaboration, Cambridge Assessment International Education (Cambridge International) and Cambridge University Press Education are formally integrating in August 2022, retaining the Cambridge International awarding body.
Benefits of integration
Bringing together the skills and capabilities of different units to make working with the organisation a frictionless experience will create much better solutions for all our customers. Our research across the years shows that aligning the curriculum, content, assessment and professional development around a common view of how to deliver excellent education, improves standards and allows high-quality products to be built.
Our International Education team unites Cambridge Assessment International Education, Cambridge University Press Education and Cambridge Partnership for Education to offer schools and governments worldwide a more joined-up experience of working with us, and an innovative range of products that combine our expertise in learning and assessment.
With this change Christine Özden, who has been Chief Executive, Cambridge International Assessment Education for three and a half years and led our summer 2022 exam series, is moving into a newly created role – Global Director, Climate Education.
A record Cambridge International exam series
We are the world’s largest provider of international education programmes and qualifications for 5- to 19-year-olds, and June 2022 saw a record number of candidates taking Cambridge International qualifications.
Delivering 1.6 million exam entries on time in exceptionally difficult circumstances is an extraordinary and excellent performance. Through an ongoing pandemic, we delivered high-stakes assessments for 220,000 students taking Cambridge International AS and A Levels and for 250,000 students receiving Cambridge IGCSEs or O Levels.
This year, 95 percent of entries came from exams, while 5 percent came from a Portfolio of Evidence of students’ own work submitted by schools and marked by Cambridge examiners. Last year, three-quarters of our students worldwide took exams.
The challenges have been extraordinary. We worked closely with schools and teachers and overcame some incredibly complex technical assessment changes that have never had to be faced before, as well as maintaining standards during a period when students have been away from school.
“There’s a massive responsibility to provide students around the world with the grades so that they can progress. To deliver that responsibility, in our biggest ever exam series, is something we can be very proud of,” says Christine Özden, who served as Chief Executive, Cambridge Assessment International Education.
Cambridge Learning for Schools
During the pandemic, we invested significantly in our international education publishing and reaped the benefits with a very strong performance this year. Our excellent 5–14 series is emerging to become the market-leading text across most regions, as are our new IGCSE Science titles which are also in high demand – a real testament to the quality and integrity of our publishing despite some logistical and distribution challenges.
”Our business was tested by the pandemic and it has done well, with the release of the biggest publishing programme we’ve ever undertaken. The way that we have performed has been remarkable: the result of hard work, amazing teamwork and genuine creativity and innovation,” says Rod Smith.
Strong sales stem from schools returning to classroom learning as well as distributors choosing to stock more and order earlier this year. This exceptional year has seen Cambridge Learning for Schools sales rise above £45million.
“Now that we’re one organisation, we can be more ambitious in joining up assessment and content and data through digital solutions, more ambitious in the way that we use technology to provide a better service, and build a stronger community with our customers.”
Rod Smith, Group Managing Director, International Education
Cambridge Early Years
Three years ago, a project group of colleagues from Cambridge International and Cambridge University Press Education began working on an early years project for India. It now serves as the first example of how we developed the curriculum, materials, and resources together to create a coherent approach to a whole educational area. A year and a half after launch, it has gained real traction in India and we are working together to add Early Years to the Cambridge Pathway globally. This will include curriculum, assessment and teaching and learning support.
Australian history
We published a new four book series for the state of Victoria in Australia, reflecting changes made by its curriculum authority to the syllabus for Australian History studied at years 11 and 12 to address the lack of balance between post-colonial history and indigenous history. The new syllabus design is likely to attract more students than the old due to increased national awareness of first nations peoples’ history and cultures. We took advice from the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria (HTAV) and key members of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and assembled a team of expert academics and teachers to author the resources led by Emeritus Professor Richard Broome AM, La Trobe University. We made a joint donation with the authors of 10 percent of net revenue to the Indigenous practicing Project, a charity that seeks to Strengthen literacy.
Digital outlook
Cambridge International and Cambridge University Press Education have accelerated our digital readiness. Customers’ acceptance and expectation of digital delivery for assessments, teaching and intelligence has been accelerated by the pandemic.
Educators now see and have deeper experience of how digital can be an important part of providing resilience in the system post-pandemic and are much more open to those products.
Huge improvements were made in our back-to-school digital onboarding platforms and processes which saw our customer service teams work with colleagues in Manila and Mexico to deliver around-the-clock service to drastically reduce customer inquiry wait times.
Our Assessment Research and Development group provides in-house support that is critical to the development and management of our high-quality
learning and assessment products and services in the UK and worldwide. During the year, Assessment Research and Development published a significant review of the strengths and weaknesses of comparative judgment – an emerging way of running assessments – and carried out for Sweden the biggest review there’s ever been of research on textbooks and digital materials. It conducted research on where the grades are placed in international qualifications and developed new data-driven processes for relating the assessment of different papers from one year to another.
The Cambridge Mathematics Project is a collaboration with our University’s Faculties of Mathematics and Education championing a world class mathematics education for all students from 3- to 19-years-old. Based on its popular ‘Espresso’ digests of research on mathematics teaching topics, the team published The Primary Teacher’s Maths Journeybook: A Year of Professional Learning and held its first Cambridge Maths Journey Week to celebrate and explore the team’s work. Director Lynne McClure, who has led Cambridge Mathematics since its inception, was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours 2022 for services to education.
A compulsory continuous performance assessment involves clearly delineated tasks which must be completed within the course unit framework and graded individually. There are the following possibilities for the marking of compulsory continuous performance assessment tasks:
a. The compulsory continuous performance assessment task needs not be passed on its own; it is awarded a grade which counts proportionally towards the total course unit grade.
b. The compulsory continuous performance assessment task must be passed on its own; it is assessed on a pass/fail basis.
c. The compulsory continuous performance assessment task must be passed on its own and counts proportionally towards the total course unit grade; it is graded (grades of 4 and above signify a pass; grades below 4 signify failure).
Not completing or failing to pass a compulsory continuous performance assessment task means that the corresponding course unit cannot be passed. If students in this situation do not deregister from the final examination their failure of the course unit will be officially decreed as a «no show». If students fail or do not complete a compulsory continuous performance assessment task, lecturers must inform them of this in writing before the deregistration deadline.
The share contributed by graded compulsory continuous performance assessment to the total course unit grade may not exceed 50%.
Teaching excellence and its relationship to research are at the heart of De Montfort University's mission. The university offers an inclusive, diverse learning community that is committed to equality of opportunity, internationalisation and progression towards learner autonomy.
The university's Empowering University Strategy empowers our students, staff and partners to create a fairer society. Our aim is to provide flexible, high-quality education for all. Our policies relating to learning, teaching and assessment ensure an equivalent experience, fair and equitable treatment and consistency of standards.
This section is concerned with the role the Department of Academic Quality (DAQ) plays in supporting the implementation of learning, teaching and assessment strategies and policies.
The Centre for Academic Innovation and Teaching Excellence (CAITE) brings together groups across the university with a collective purpose of supporting innovative and future looking learning and teaching practices, that have a strong focus on digital pedagogy which will support the vision and implementation articulated within our Education 2030 strategy and beyond.
