ARC

Description of Good Assessment Practice

Title: Dr
Name: Hsiao-Hui Lee
Academic Position: Assistant Professor (Lecturer in UK or NZ)
Name of Institution: University of Hong Kong
Country: Hong Kong
Discipline: Business & Economics
Department/School: School of Business
Course title: Operation and Quality Management
Course code: BUSI0023A
Class size: 21-40
Course Year: Year 2
Assessment Title: 'X-PULT' Project & In-class Participation Facilitated by a 'Name Card'
Assessment Type: Both
Time allowed for assessment:
Target: Assessment of group work
Learning outcomes of the assessment practice: Learning Outcome 1: to be able to clearly identify and define a loosely structured operations process,

Learning Outcome 2: to be able to use systematic approaches to assess operations and quality capability of a process

Learning Outcome 3: to be able to apply process improvement tools to redesign an operations process, and

Learning Outcome 4: to be able to develop skills in designing and implementing an effective operations system
Key features and principles of the assessment practice: Key features
1.) Group project (20%)

Students have to work on a project using a tool called ‘X-PULT’ (see Figure 1 & 2) in groups of 5 students. Using the X-PULT device, students have to come up with a set up for launching a ball into a bin. They have to consider different factors that will affect the precision of the shooting. For example, the number of rubber bands to use, the type of balls to use, the way to fix the device to the table, the degree to launch the ball, the way to prepare the bin, the person to launch the ball, the number of fingers to use when launching the ball.

Assessment will be based on the following:
1.) the number of balls which get into the bin during the actual shooting of the ball in class (5%);
2.) a presentation in which they are expected to explain how they designed the shooting process (5%); and
3.) the quality of the report in which students are expected to summarize their project (10%).

2.) Assignments (10%)

Students have to complete 6 assignments, which include calculations questions as well as cases that will help enhance students’ understanding of different ideas. Students will be graded for effort for 4 of the assignments, but only 1 will be graded in details of what they wrote. The assignment selected to be graded in details will be the same for all students, so that the grading would be consistent. If a student missed that particular assignment, a random one will be graded instead.

3.) In-Class participation

At the start of the course, some personal information of each student (e.g. name, major, a description of something interesting about themselves, and a description of what they expect to take away from this course.) will be collected on name cards (see Figure 3). During classes, students will be called upon to answer questions and they will be graded based on their attendance and the quality of their answer. If a student who is called upon is not present, he/she will get a low participation grade on that particular day. If a student is called upon or volunteered, the lecturer will listen to his/her answer and then give him/her a grade from A to C behind the card. A more detailed grade will be given later. For instance, if the lecturer think that a student is an ‘A’ student for today’s participation, whether he will get an ‘A+’, ‘A’ or ‘A-’, will be dependent on how impressive the lecturer feels about the quality of his/her answer or the question he/she asked. Towards the end of the course, the grades will be translated into marks based on the number of times the students participated as well as the quality of his/her questions/answers.
What are the best things about this assessment method? Assessment is broken up into different types of assessment tasks. The project is not like a typical project, but a fun game for them to play, and at the same time, they learnt to use some of the tools. Some degree of freedom is also given to students for the assignment as 1 out of the 6 assignments will be waived. As there are a lot of opportunities for students to participate in class, there are also plenty of opportunities for the lecturer to give immediate feedback following the responses from students.
What are the challenges in implementing this assessment method? The challenge foreseen in the years to come would be a big class size. As this type of pedagogy is working well with a small class size, it is questionable whether the lecturer will be able to get the same amount of attention of class size is doubled.
What do your students think about this assessment method? (Any evaluation?)
Plans for changes/developments in future (if any):
Attachment: Figures & Tables
Creation date: 2015-10-15 15:28:55