GL011: Guidelines for Student Workload and Assessment Equivalence

The CPEE is committed to providing students with a learning environment where learning outcomes are validated through authentic assessment. It is recognised that over-assessment may lead to shallow learning when students focus on numerous trivial assessment tasks rather than deeper learning and understanding. Excessive student assessment workload also leads to excessive workload for Unit Chairs, through both the designing/setting of assessment tasks and the grading of student responses. An optimum number of well-designed assessment tasks, well-spaced over a semester, ensures adequate time for students to create their responses and also for Unit Chairs to grade the submissions and provide useful, constructive feedback. It must be noted that these guidelines are based on a notional CPEE student workload of 150 hours per Unit semester. They must not be rigidly interpreted with respect to student effort or length as interpreted by a word count or an estimated workload. It must be recognised by Unit Chairs that the time and effort required by students to complete an assessment task will vary significantly across the student cohort.