Academic Consideration Policy
What is flexibility in assessment?
Assessment frameworks can be designed with intentional flexibility of deadlines and completion requirements to ensure that students are able to demonstrate achievement of learning outcomes while not being unnecessarily impacted by personal extenuating circumstances. Each type of flexibility has its pros and cons; the best policy for your course depends on numerous contextual factors such as the needs of your students, number and types of assessments, course enrollment, and your workload. Finding the best policy for your course will take time (Hills & Peacock, 2022); however, many approaches to flexibility in assessment can be easily supported through OWL Brightspace.
Benefits
What is the benefit for students?
What is the benefit for instructors?
How do I implement flexibility in assessment?
Some examples of flexibility that would provide adequate support in lieu of academic consideration include:
1. Flexible Deadlines: Flexible deadline policies allow you to take a proactive, student-centred approach to managing late assignments. Involving your students in conversations about deadlines and giving them some agency over their own schedules is one way you can enact the UDL strategy of providing options for self-regulation (CAST, n.d.).
Strategy: Establish an automatic extension for all assignments
For example, "In this course, your written assignments have a no-questions-asked 3-day grace period. This means that you can submit any of these assignments up to 3 days past the posted deadline without penalty. As such, requests for academic consideration [for this assessment/written assignment] will be denied."
In Brightspace, it's possible to set a due date and an end date. Students will be able to submit until the end date.
TIP: Don't require students to provide notifications unless it is necessary for your planning. This reduces barriers for students and reduces your workload in tracking requests. If notification is required, consider using a tool like Qualtrics to systematically collect the information as opposed to asking students to email you with the information.
2. Flexible Assignment Completion: Allowing students a choice or automating the calculation of which repeated assessments (e.g., multiple quizzes) to complete or which scores are calculated in their final grade allows them to organize their time and provides opportunities for recovery from poor performance or missed assignments.
Strategy: Drop lowest grades in a series of assignments
For example, “This course has weekly quizzes in weeks 2-11 for a total of 10 quizzes. The lowest 3 quiz grades, including missed quizzes, will be dropped from consideration when calculating your final overall grade for quizzes. As such, requests for academic consideration for these assignments/quizzes will be denied.”
Brightspace allows you to automatically drop a set number of assignments in an assignment category.
TIP: Set this up to be automated in Brightspace quizzes.
Strategy: Provide students choice in when to complete required tasks or assignments
For example, “Every week, there will be ongoing discussion forums. You are expected to contribute to the discussions at least 5 times throughout the term. You may select the weeks that are of the most interest or that work best for your schedule. You are responsible for planning wisely. Please be aware that requests for academic consideration for these posts will be denied.”
You can provide instructions for students to only contribute a certain number of times to a discussion forum. Marking can also be automated using the option to drop mentioned above.
TIP: Talk to your students about the implications of skipping a contribution and how it could impact future unanticipated missed assessments. Encourage students to complete all assessments and coursework even if it might not be their best work at the time.
References
CAST (n.d.). UDL and assessment. UDL on campus: Universal Design for Learning in higher education. http://udloncampus.cast.org/page/assessment_udl
Cook, A. (2001). Assessing the use of flexible assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 26(6), 539- 549. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930120093878
Coyne, P., & Woodruff, S. J. (2022). Giving students choice: Does the use of a flexible assessment weighting scheme result in better student grades? International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 33(3), 398-406. https://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/IJTLHE4117.pdf
Hills, M., & Peacock, K. (2022). Replacing power with flexible structure: Implementing flexible deadlines to improve student learning experiences. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 10. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.10.26
Irwin, B., & Hepplestone, S. (2012). Examining increased flexibility in assessment formats. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 37(7), 773-785. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2011.573842
Jopp, R., & Cohen, J. (2022). Choose your own assessment–assessment choice for students in online higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 27(6), 738-755. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1742680
Pacharn, P., Bay, D., & Felton, S. (2013). The impact of a flexible assessment system on students' motivation, performance and attitude. Accounting Education, 22(2), 147-167. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639284.2013.765292
Schroeder, M., Makarenko, E., & Warren, K. (2019). Introducing a late bank in online graduate courses: The response of students. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2019.2.8200
Schwartz, M., Roach, N., Anwar, S., Tanner, J., & Thistle, R. (n.d.) Flexible learning resource. Toronto Metropolitan University. https://www.torontomu.ca/content/dam/learning-teaching/teaching-resources/teach-a-course/flexible-learning.pdf
Tobin, T. J., & Behling, K. T., (2018). Reach everyone, teach everyone: Universal design for learning in higher education. West Virginia University Press.