The creation of a digital application or website which allows students creatively demonstrate the Software and IT skills learned through a specific module or topic.
Advantages & Challenges
Advantages
Challenges
Advantages
Developing an app or website requires practical IT skills that are applicable in the working world. It can help students develop skills that would be beneficial in their future careers.
This form of assessment requires students to be creative when designing the app/website and to consider various options for features that could be included.
Creating an app/website can be an engaging activity for students in comparison to traditional forms of assessment. After completing the assessment, they have a tangible output that they can add to a portfolio or CV to showcase the work they have completed.
Challenges
Students may vary in their technical skills which may lead to differences in performance.
Evaluating students’ performance in creating an app/website may be difficult, it is important to have a clear assessment brief and grading rubric.
Using this form of assessment may require using specific technologies and software. It is important to provide training to students in advance of using this type of assessment, to ensure they know how to use the tools.
Tips for Use
Identify the learning objectives of this assessment i.e. are you looking to assess students on the design process, innovative ideas to solve real world issues or their ability to code and create their own sites.
Depending on what you are aiming to assess the difficulty of this assessment type will vary.
Consider as an initial step giving the students a scenario or problem that they will have to create an app or website relating to the topics.
This can be used as an individual or group-based assessment.
This process could be broken into different sections i.e. brainstorming ideas, researching the market, developing feasibility studies, storyboarding ideas, creating a wireframe and developing a prototype.
When using this assessment primarily for design purposes there are many free tools online student can use to develop their storyboards and wireframes.
Create an in-depth rubric for this form of assessment. Some ideas for areas to add to the rubric are:
