Providing Initial Teacher Education Students with Flexible Assessment

Abstract

This paper describes our experience offering students flexibility in the timing of when they submitted their assessment tasks for marking. The study sample comprised students enrolled in an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) unit ICT in Education. This unit is the equivalent of 150 hours of study distributed over 14 weeks of teaching. Rather than providing fixed due dates for the completion and submission of five assessment activities throughout the teaching period - as was the case in previous iterations of the unit - students were provided with a flexible assessment schedule for submission. Results showed that student overall perceptions of flexible due dates were positive. However, despite being given the choice about when they might submit their assessment activities, the majority of students submitted their work on or very near the final due date. Overall, students provided with a flexible assessment schedule did not do any better or any worse than students with a fixed assessment schedule.