Sustainable assessment: an action research study of the introduction of a case study module for large groups of business students

The context for this paper is the recent redevelopment of the undergraduate business courses at Brighton Business School. Faced with ever increasing numbers of students our guiding principle was: To reduce the assessment load both for staff and students whilst maintaining academic standards. Rust (2001) and Brown (2006) suggest if traditional methods continue to be used for large classes assessment may become too time consuming, less rigorous, with little and/or superficial feedback to students. Academics should devote more of their time and energies to formative feedback and less on curriculum delivery (Brown, 2006; Horby, 2006; Race, 2005). Critically, Boud (1995) proposes students can, with difficulty, escape the effects of poor teaching, but they cannot (if they wish to graduate) escape the effects of poor assessment. In addition, the course redevelopment team was tasked with addressing the issue of increasing numbers of final-year dissertation students who appear to be less prepared to cope with major research-based pieces of work.