Optimizing Assessment of Students for Quality Learning

The purpose of this paper is to provide a possible solution to the problem of reliability of assessment used in some universities. Often students do not know or understand according to which the criteria they have been assessed, and this leads to student dissatisfaction with their final marks which they believe do not reflect their ability and the amount of work they have done on the course. Students have a feeling that assessment is carried out subjectively and they might not be satisfied with their final marks. An experiment was held to compare the traditional for many universities assessment (1-2 midterm exams and a final exam) with continuous assessment. It was held with the 3rd year students at a University in Iraq for a qualitative (verbal and not numeric) course which is called “Production Management” and is taught by the author. The effects of the above types of assessment are discussed.