Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR courses

Guidance and resources to support EPICUR course development, cc-by-sa

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Multimedia Assessment

Why multimedia assessment?

Multimedia assessment includes video, webpages, wikis, podcasts, slideshares or vodcasts, audio recordings, e-posters and more. Multimedia is an established mode of communication and dissemination, and graduates can expect employers to expect digital competences. Practising and honing multimedia skills during their studies, can help students develop relevant digital competences and have their own examples to showcase.

As with all course assessment, the assessment method is most effective when it aligns with the course learning outcomes and when it provides all students with inclusive opportunities to demonstrate their learning. Students with different neurodiversities can be especially challenged by text based assessment methods. Visual and audio methods offer all students a wide repertoire of opportunities to explain and visualise their responses to course assessments.

The course’s subject matter may naturally lean towards multimedia assessment, such as a communications’ course assessment which requires students to present a story using visual or audio media. However, there are many more possibilities such as group members presenting their task results in the form of a wiki, with each member having peer reviewing responsibilities or students videoing and critiquing each other’s clinical techniques.

Students may need to allocate time to learning new multimedia skills, and educators may also have to upskill. However, the opportunity to express oneself with a different media can spark and sustain the motivation for learning and applying new skills.

8 key points about multimedia assessment

Be clear about the rationalefor including multimedia assessment methods in a course, review whether mixed assessment methods would be most appropriate.
Remember equal opportunities, only use multimedia tools which are accessible to all the students.
Be aware of your university’s GDPR requirements. Finding out which multimedia tools are supported by and accessible via the university.
Be mindful of the associated time and resources neededfor learning new skills or upskilling. If the students are novices to the chosen assessment method, provide an online space where they can share resources.
Provide students with clear instructions and guidanceon what is expected – one of the easiest ways for students to grasp this is to see different examples of what the assessment could look like and to peer review them against the criteria or learning outcomes for the course assessment. If this is the first time you are using this multimedia assessment method, you will not have examples of previous course assessments to share, so look for examples from other courses and share these with the students, providing time for discussion and clarification.
Include examples of the course assessment media in the course resources to help students familiarise themselves with what is possible.
Prepare an assessment checklist or rubric for you and the students. Using such resources can help reduce the gap between your and the students’ expectations of what a good one looks or sounds like. Students may spend too much time on presentation features, so clarify if the design and delivery processes are or are not being assessed, and if they are what is important? Keep referring to the checklist or rubric to guide the students’ focus on what is required for the assessment.
Assessment checklists or rubrics are also valuable for the examiner, especially when using a new or novel assessment method.

Multimedia assessment in practice - video and peer feeback

Mathematics 1, (SDU) – 350 enrolled students

A main focus in this course is to get the students to discuss and argue with mathematics; to train their command of mathematics as a language. This is reflected in several of the activities in the course:

Group discussions
In the exercise sessions Monday and Tuesday, the students work with math problems at whiteboards in small random groups of three students. The intention is to get the students to discuss their approach to a new type of problem that they have not encountered before.

Lecture
The aim of the lecture on Thursday is to provide an overview of the topic of the week. Where is that type of mathematics used (examples from the different engineering educations)? Is there anything you need to pay attention to when applying it?

Video assignments and peer feedback
During the 12 week course, the students record and upload a short video (3-4 minutes) every week where they show and explain how to solve a given task from the course. The video should be recorded in a single take (to make it easier for the students to record it and to make it harder to borrow from each other). The content of the video is a brief statement about who has recorded the video and then an introduction to the exercise. Students can write the exercise on a piece of paper before the recording starts. Finally, the students should show how to solve the task by explaining what they do and simultaneously do the necessary intermediate calculations.

After having handed in the video assignment, the students provide peer feedback on three other students’ videos, focusing on:
1. What works well in the video
2. What can be improved in the video

Incentive
Each time the students have handed in a video and provided comments to three other students, they earn a point that will be added to their written exam. They can earn up op 10 points that way.

Links to resources for multimedia assessment

Monash University provides guidance for educators on student assessments using video, which includes examples of the students’ assessment videos.

Read about video being used as an assessment tool for law students as an example of Universal Design for Learning.

Assessing students’ multimedia work by the University College London, identifies educational benefits for students and provides guidance on organising multimedia assessments.

London School of Economics provides a guide on visual media as an assessment tool.

References

Arsenis, Panagiotis., Flores, Miguel., & Petropoulou, Dimitra. (2021). Enhancing graduate employability skills and student engagement through group video assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47(2), 245–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1897086

Innovative Assessment

Author(s)

This resource sheet has been co-written or written by

Henrik Skov Midtiby (SDU)
Donna Hurford (SDU)

Related Resource Sheets

Next steps

If you need further support with developing your course, please contact your local teaching support unit.
If you need further information on offering your course for EPICUR, please contact your EPICUR institutional coordinator.

Contact Details

Local teaching support units

EPICUR Institutional Coordinators

Adam Mickiewicz University
Karolina Choczaj
karmench@amu.edu.pl

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Nikos Kouloussis
nikoul@agro.auth.gr

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Michael Zacherle
zacherle@kit.edu

University of Amsterdam
Tiffany Boersma
t.a.boersma@uva.nl

Universität Freiburg
Charlotte Langowski
charlotte.langowski@zv.uni-freiburg.de

Université de Haute-Alsace
Léa Ziri
lea.ziri@uha.fr

Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Nicolas Fries
nicolas.fries@boku.ac.at

University of Southern Denmark
Ida Thøstesen
ilt@sdu.dk

University of Strasbourg
Pascale Nachez
pnachez@unistra.fr

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This Resource Sheet within the Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR Courses was created by Henrik Skov Midtiby and Donna Hurford, University of Southern Denmark.
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