Objectives:
After participating in this exercise, learners should be better-able to:
- Achieve higher assessment literacy
- Formulate and negotiate assessment criteria for a task, and undertake the task with the criteria firmly in mind;
- Think constructively about the weighting of assessment criteria;
- Undertake peer assessment of other teams’ performance;
- Undertake self-assessment by reflecting on their own group’s performance;
- Recognise the benefits of team work (and address some of the problems of working in teams);
- On the basis of a ‘fun’ exercise, take forward useful thinking on assessment design.
Overview
The task is for groups of learners to make a container to hold an egg that is capable of being dropped from a specified height and position in the room without the egg breaking. To do this properly you need about two hours in a large flat room, big enough to enable groups to work independently. This is a practice task to familiarise learners with the concepts of meaningful assessment criteria, weighting and agency of assessment and is particularly useful during the first six weeks of the first semester of the first year. It is presented as serious fun which improves learners’ assessment literacy. It’s also a good staff development exercise to get staff to think hard about assessment issues.
Learners in a class (16-70) are divided into groups of 4-6, at separate tables around the room, and provided with a range of everyday objects as resources, including an unbroken fresh egg. They are briefed to use the resources in a specified time to arrange that the egg can be dropped from a specified height and position in the room to ground level, and remain unbroken by the fall. They are to use the various resources in a creative way to achieve this. But first the groups must come up with around five assessment criteria, which will be used by the other groups to assess each group’s achievement of the exercise, and the whole group of learners must assign weightings to each of the criteria. One criterion is not negotiable: “The egg remains unbroken by the fall”.
Activity
- Divide the learners into small teams (groups of about 4-6 work well). This activity can be done with a class size of up to 50, but for smaller classes the minimum group size is 3.
- Advise the learners of the purpose of the task, emphasising that it is competitive but essentially fun, and that actually the discussion around the task is much more important to their understanding of assessment conventions than the task itself.
- Issue the materials to the groups, instructing them that no other items may be used, including waste paper bins, people and furniture. Insist no one handles the materials and egg before the start signal. You may need to be very strict about this. You may also wish to ham up the rawness of the egg by chucking them to the learners or ‘accidentally’ dropping one. Get each group to check their egg is not cracked when they receive it.
- Ask learners to brainstorm up to 5 criteria on which they should be judged (5 mins)
- Collate the criteria on a flipchart or white board, and telling them that the egg not breaking is the non-negotiable criterion, get them to collectively prioritise their further criteria. Ask them to include both product and process in the criteria. (Typical criteria include effective planning, aesthetic beauty, sustainability (all items could be reused), using all items provided or smallest number of items, team all worked together well, everyone contributed to the task in some way, achieving the task within the set time, and so on). You shouldn’t need to spend more than 10 mins on this but if you get into discussing how you judge aesthetic beauty it could take 15 mins.
- Explain the concept of weighting of assessment criteria. Tell them that the egg not breaking is worth 40% and ask them to propose weightings for the other four criteria that add up to 100% with the most important things being given the highest weighting. (5 mins).
- Negotiate agreed weightings for the criteria for the whole group and put on flipchart or white board. (5 mins).
- Get the whole group to think up who will actually do the assessmenti.e. agency for 5 mins. Forexample, most product items could be assessed by the tutor or the learners acting as peers rating other groups (inter-peer assessment). If they are judging items like how well they worked as a team, this will have to be rated within the group by four peers each rating the fifth, i.e. intra peer assessment. Self assessment might be used for example if a negotiated criteria is something like individuals contributing to the best of their capabilities or enjoyment. Even if you only use a couple of agents, its helpful to discuss the full range and mention that other possibilities on future group work might include employers, placement managers and clients. (10 mins).
- Get the groups to talk for 5 mins about what they plan to do and insist no one touches the materials until you start the task.
- Start the task advising them they have say 8 minutes in which to complete it. You may wish to add to the sense of fun by blowing a whistle, setting a kitchen timer, phone timer or whatever.
- Watch learners in action, talking no part in the activity but you may wish to record any breach of the rules which you can bring up in your moderation/summing up.
- Stop the task exactly on time. Blowing your whistle loudly is fun! Notice any learners who choose to carry on regardless and decide whether to penalise them totally by giving no marks at all (this gives you a chance to mention things like plagiarism policies and rules on issues like mitigation) and the risks learners can run by ignoring the detail of assignment brief.
- Allow each group in turn to come to the ‘dropping point’ and use their equipment to drop their egg from the specified height to the floor, and prove whether or not their egg has been broken, carrying out the assessment using tutors and peers as appropriate. If you have a lot of groups, this can take quite a while. Discuss the assessment of the first six or so in detail, and then tell learners that to do every one in detail would take ages and this is after all a game about assessment (but do drop every egg and check the egg isn’t broken or else learners will feel cheated).
- It is really important to get the learners back into small groups after the assessment to discuss the assessment issues for at least five minutes (try to stop them having endless discussions about whether their design was actually best or whether they were fairly treated, and so on) and then have 5-10 minutes in plenary with you summing up the learning points.
- You might then wish to issue to learners the assignment brief for the next actual assessment task that follows in their course or module, and get them to bring along to the next session any queries they have about criteria, weighting, agency or anything else, arising from their reflections on the egg game.
Skill Development:
- Assessment literacy
- Team working.
- Creativity and originality of design.
- Time and task-management.
- Learners formulating and agreeing assessment criteria for the task.
- Learners proposing and agreeing the weighting of the assessment criteria.
- Peer-assessment of other groups’ performances.
- Self-assessment and reflection on what happened in each group.
Resources:
Flipchart of white board to display agreed assessment criteria.
Supermarket carrier bag, per group, in which you place:
- a pair of scissors
- a small roll of sellotape
- a selection of about 4 items from the following: a newspaper, a plastic cup, paper plate, tissue paper (or a tissue), length of string (about 2 metres seems to work well), cocktail sticks, wooden or plastic clothes peg, square of bubble wrap (if you want to make it really easy for them) or whatever is available.
- one uncooked egg in shell.
It is important that each bag contains more-or-less identical kit, otherwise appeals of ‘unfairness of assessment’ may arise (though of course you might wish this to be one of the matters which will arise, in which case allow some differences in the kit).
References:
- Brown, S. (2015) Learning, teaching and assessment in higher education: global perspectives, London: Palgrave-MacMillan.
- http://sally-brown.net