Assessing students' performance in first-year university management tutorials

Abstract

This article reports on the processes and challenges of constructing an outcomesbased assessment tool in first year university Management tutorials that would meet the following criteria: (1) provide students with constructive feedback that would guide their future performance (2) not demand excessive effort on the part of the tutor to be effective (3) address the demand for fairness. Students and tutor evaluations suggested that the tool developed, met the first two criteria successfully. Achieving the third criterion proved challenging for two reasons: (1) the difficulties involved in making the assessment criteria explicit and (2) the inconsistency across tutors when converting the criterion-referenced performance indicators into normreferenced percentages. Further research is needed to address the challenges posed in achieving the criterion of fairness.

South African Journal of Higher Education Vol. 19(5) 2005: 956-968