One of my elective law courses, Asian Legal Systems, presented a challenge. As well as enabling students understand how law and legal institutions in Asia operate in different and distinctive ways, the design of this comparative law course was to facilitate discussion and the sharing of perspectives thus maximising student input. Keeping these dynamics alive in Zoom classes led to several modifications in assessment.

Students use artifacts as points of inspiration for short (500 word) written pieces relevant to their discipline. Students are marked on their written expression and adherence to conventions of the genre. Works are also recited during tutorials and students marked on how well they engage others through their spoken delivery.

Concepts and skills are developed over a semester to design an interactive computer program for a hypothetical museum exhibition. By providing structure while leaving some aspects unspecified, students make creative choices and combine skill sets, and demonstrate mastery to meet the objective of inspiring patrons. Clear and relevant communication to the end-user is a top priority.

As a class students are set a collaborative task to produce a creative item relevant to their discipline (e.g. in MUSC3020, an original Album recorded and produced by students) and attend weekly laboratory sessions focused on relevant skill acquisition. This is scaffolded with written reflections where students outline their contribution.

Designed to creatively encourage application of course themes and discipline-specific theory and concepts, this task requires students to select a book (from a list of relevant texts) and construct a 1000 word review. Attention should be paid to addressing the effectiveness of various texts to engage complex or abstract ideas.

Designed to develop student's critical awareness of their own writing practice and to learn modes of creative and reflective written genres, this assessment sees student write a short creative genre piece (in the case of WRIT1005 students write a children's short story) and produce an accompanying 500-word critical reflection.

Completed in pairs, this assessment sees students work collaboratively to produce a creative media output and an accompanying rationale detailing and justifying the stylistic choices made (in the case of MSTU1001 students produce a section of film storyboard). Students are marked on their grasp of relevant conventions and theories.

Students construct a 2000 word essay critiquing a film from their disciplinary perspective. This involves analysing salient aspects of plot situation, thematic elements etc. by applying relevant theories/concepts from the course content. This task particularly reinforces formative disciplinary knowledge (which often challenges early undergraduates) through engaging contemporary contexts.

Designed with an explicit focus on developing students writing capabilities (especially in relation to professional and/or vocational genres), this assessment sees students produce weekly written pieces of varying genres for which they receive qualitative feedback. Students must then choose 4 of these written pieces for revision and inclusion in a summative online portfolioportfolio.

Students write a 1500 – 2000 word document (in a form decided by the convenor) in the language being taught. This is paired with an oral presentation based on the written piece. Students are assessed on grammatical proficiency and their ability to conform to stylistic conventions of the written genre.