Articles and reviews

What can articles and reviews assess?

The types of task that fit under this heading include

reading an article and writing or presenting a review
writing an article on a topic for a defined audience
writing a review of an event, process, experience

Depending on the learning outcomes, the focus could be the product (the review or the article), the process (reviewing, presenting, writing), or both.

What alternative assessments could I choose?

Back to Assessment Methods selector

Design

This assessment method requires the students to:

have a in-depth understanding of the topic / article (knowledge / comprehension)
be able to abstract the pertinent information (analysis / evaluation)
(re-)order the information in a concise manner (application / synthesis)
present the information at the appropriate level of the stated audience (presentation / empathy).

The usual audience is the academic tutor; in this case we could define the reader / listener as a New Scientist reader /Times reader etc.

Asking for a review of a very contemporary event is unlikely to be 'AI proof'. Moving away from text-based articles, for example assigning a photo-essay or story, a scrapbook, or video review of an event or experience, might be alternative options.

Diversity & inclusion Academic integrity

The ability to mimic genre/style and generate text for specific contexts is one of Generative AIs superpowers, so you will need to think carefully how far you prioritise this in your ILOs or assessment criteria, or make the creation/thought process more visible through reflective work or other mechanism. Alternatively you could ask your student to act as 'editor' for one of these publications and critique/revise a piece produced by AI.

Student and staff experience

Benefits Challenges Workload

Useful resources

Paul, J., & Criado, A. R. (2020). The art of writing literature review: What do we know and what do we need to know? International business review, 29 (4), 101717Link opens in a new window.