Student Assessment In A Problem-Based Curriculum

Abstract

In this paper two different student assessment systems will be described. Both systems are developed for use within a problem-based curriculum. The first system, the ‘classical’ problem-based learning assessment system, is the system that our faculty of economics and business administration started with, when in 1984 the first students entered our school. This system is called classical because of the fact that it was taken over from the medical school, being inextricably entwined with all the other ideas, experiences and solutions on problem-based learning. However, as with many ideas that are taken over, the system inevitably began to change, from year to year, with continuous shifts in some years, and discontinuous large jumps in others. One of these paradigm shifts occurred in the academic year 1991/1992, the year of the general reprogramming of the faculty’s curriculum (see also the contribution of Hans Kasper, this volume). In that year the backbone of the classical assessment system, the progress test, was removed from the first year program and replaced by a new type of test, the so-called overall test. To stress the importance of this paradigm shift, I will call the assessment system that was evolved by that time and which is largely the regime prevailing at this moment, with the new overall test as backbone, the ‘alternative’ problem-based learning assessment system. In this paper I will not only describe both systems, but also give the main arguments that led to the abolishment of the progress test, which sometimes is seen as one of the foundations of problem-based learning.