Learning towards designing assessment for distance students: a postgraduate case study

Christine Lee
Monash University

Keywords: planning; distance teaching; diversity

Unlike on-campus students, distance students generally need not attend formal classes at university. Therefore, students located in remote or isolated locations anywhere in the world can enrol and study as a distance student for their qualification. Furthermore, with a flexible intake of students in certain courses, the student population ranges in culture and abilities to cope with their study.

This paper presents a case study of a postgraduate unit that has been designed for distance students in an Australian university. The organization, planning and administration of this unit take into account the diverse student population with a range of abilities and needs. Hence the design and the revision of the teaching material and assessments are to cater for the great majority of students in this group. This paper discusses and highlights the importance and benefit of formative assessment techniques in gathering information for planning purposes. However, practically, with the scarcity of resources that include the provision of teaching, it has become a fine balancing act to distribute the available teaching time and resources among the teaching related tasks that can be included to cater for the majority of students much better. This paper concludes that despite the constraints and challenges in teaching a diverse range of students, it is important to note these differences in order to cater for the majority.