1. Promote the use of assessment as a learning activity
2. Encourage students' participation and interaction by involving them in the design and enactment of assessment
3. Enhance students generic capabilities such as critical thinking and life-long learning

1. An online assessment system to ease administrative work
2. Suggestion of methods for grading students' self-assessment

The project is a Science Faculty TDG project. It promotes the use of assessment as a learning activity and encourages students' participation and interaction by involving students in the design and enactment of assessment. Students are asked to contribute or to select the criteria for assessing a learning activity, and to enact self- and peer-assessment based on the criteria they selected.

The online student assessment system has the following characteristics:

• Engaging students in the design of assessment


1. a teacher registers an account for a learning activity
2. each course can have more than one learning activity
3. the activity can be an individual or a group activity
4. each course can have more than one teacher or teaching assistant
5. teacher can ask students to contribute assessment criteria
6. teacher can compile a list by selecting appropriate criteria from the bank for students' reference or for discussion with students
7. teacher can add appropriate criteria to the list


• Engaging students in the enactment of peer-assessment and self-assessment


1. each student can register her/his own account by which s/he can give scores to her/his own group and all other peer groups
2. final marks can be automatically generated by comparing the performance of different groups
3. all the results are stored in a server database
4. teachers or teaching assistants can input or check the marks
5. a summary of the performance of all groups is available

1. A total of 16 studies were completed in 2005-06 and 2006-2007, and more are ongoing.
2. Assessment criterion bank
3. Indicator of students' performance
4. Online publication

1. determining the assessment criteria
2. conducting peer-assessment and self-assessment

1. Design appropriate learning activities
2. Facilitate the assessment processes

1. Focus groups
2. In-depth interview
3. Questionnaires
4. External evaluation by CLEAR

1. Positive results in classes of smaller sizes, and higher level courses
2. Challenges when class size is large, or when students perceive that the learning activities will lead to extra workload

More information can be found at the project website at
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/sci/TDG/