Evening all,
To start off today, a little insight into the madness factory for you. Most of the posts I've ever written and pushed to this site have been written either while on a train home from campus (where I'm typing right this morning), or while sitting on the couch with my wife and the pups (where I'm typing this evening). But recently I've been collecting ideas and sticking them in the draft posts, in case I ever develop a partially-fledged thought again.
So when I had a brief twitter conversation yesterday with Juuso Neiminen (Deakin uni), it reminded me that I had previously captured the idea that is today's title. And here we are.
So to start, yes, I'm perfectly aware that the title of this post is slightly provocative. But I'm not seriously suggesting that the two "things" are antagonistic, or that accessibility is the Balki to assessment security's cousin Larry. However, it's an issue that's growing in font size in my mind, so I thought it's worth putting on digital paper to unpack.
In getting this far I'm not entirely sure where I'm going, but the two threads I'm going to hang onto are what we get wrong in both. To head on down that track I'm going to share a diagram made by Tim Fawns (Monash):
As a basic construct I instinctively agree with this, however I could also see immediately that it wouldn't work, at least not at the level of individual assessment. In many ways this is what we do now, except the "restrictions" are either porous, non-existent, or restricting stuff which actually doesn't mean very much in 2024. By the last I mean copy and paste plagiarism. If someone can explain to me precisely what learning is lost by understanding a topic well enough to nick a sentence and put it in an essay, you're a better person than I.
Essentially, while it is possible to secure any given assessment, it is extraordinarily costly, both in monetary terms but also in terms of how awful the resulting experience is for students.
And, to rejoin the threads of today's post, if it's unpleasant for students without any accessibility needs, it's shithouse for students with those needs.
So, if we know things aren't working on the levels of either assessment security or assessment (and let's not forget huge marking workloads), how might it be different? Let's come back to Tim's diagram.
If we imagine this diagram as a subject/unit/module/course, or even a whole program, and the "No restrictions" part of this diagram as "learning activities" instead of "assessment", the secure process" gets much simpler. Of course, the lazy and thoughtless institutions out there will simply select exams and be done with it. But there are other possibilities, and I'm sure you can imagine them. In essence one size doesn't fit all. The other thing I noticed, is that this process looks a fair bit like the Cambridge Tripos, but I think we could do it a lot better.
Broad Australian accent: "Plus Ca change, hey?"
Now, I'm going to turn our collective attention to the other thread, accessibility. I've seen enough complaints in my time about unfulfilled accessibility adjustments to know that a student presenting to the uni with, say, ADHD, is only part way there. I work directly alongside the Accessibility team at my uni, and I know how hard they work to try to help students with what are mostly minor adjustments, like a bit of extra time for assessments. But wait, that doesn't mean anything if Professor Arsehat doesn't feel like reading his emails, or arranging anything for his students. And this might be just for one assessment in one subject. Multiply by infinity for the student and the accessibility team, and it's all just a costly schemozzle which doesn't do much to improve student's ability to demonstrate their learning. And just like assessment security in that, practically speaking, it doesn't work if you think about applying it to many assessments x multiple units. So, as with assessment security, bring it up a level. If an institution can design a smaller, but secure and equitable and accessible, set of assessments to cover disciplines, it's two birds with one stone.
On the other hand, if you haven't found my rambling convincing, consider what happened in the UK recently. After the recent tragic death of a student, and a subsequent lawsuit by her parents, UK unis now have an "anticipatory duty" to put things in place so there is equality by default. Here is a good summary by Jim Dickinson of WonkHE, it's really worth reading. In an age where generative AI is wreaking havoc, some iteration of what I've attempted to explain above will have a marked effect, while also enabling "AI literacy", as learning and not as cheating.
To wrap up, I think that assessment security and accessibility are only opposed if we specifically decide they must be. I've never issued a mark in my life, but I've controlled thousands, watched it happen and seen how the sausage is made. If I can imagine secure and inclusive assessments for a unit, I'm pretty sure you can too.
On a very final note, unis are going through some right times, but we could be going through right times and have this happen as well. Thank your lucky stars, don't choose the souvlaki, and best wishes to all those at the University of Canterbury.
Until next time,
KM
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