CIT Teaching & Learning Unit

The Department of Marketing & International Business at Munster Technological University has a substantial track-record in implementing Authentic Assessment with its students, culminating in being awarded the prestigious DELTA Award from the National Forum for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

The Disciplinary Excellence in Learning, Teaching and Assessment (DELTA) Award is presented to discipline groups who can demonstrate a record of excellence in teaching and learning enhancement and who commit to an ongoing, clearly articulated, shared process of continued enhancement. 

As part of the growth trajectory of the Department of Marketing & International Business since its inception in 2013, the department has developed a portfolio of programmes that, in the first instance, is composed of courses that are predominately Continuous Assessment based and within that, where Authentic Assessment is the primary assessment mechanism. 

This approach within the department largely developed in an effective but haphazard way. New staff members learned from more established members of the valuable learning experience that emerged from Authentic Assessment practices. With this, students attested to the importance of ‘live cases’ to their learning journey. This has accorded with the dramatic increase in numbers in the department which has developed from less than 200 in 2013 to 950 in 2021. 

SAAM will help formalise the systems and processes of Authentic Assessment and enable the department meet its DELTA commitments around continued enhancement.

The strategy of SAAM is to support those active in the marketing discipline (and in time, others) in making the best use of Authentic Assessment practices. This will include:

• Development of material to assist lecturers to use Authentic Assessment for the first time including -
  • Guidelines for designing Authentic Assessment oriented modules including checklists & time-lines;
  • Templates to draft: module descriptors, assignment briefs, marking schemes & rubrics;
• Development of promotional material to explain Authentic Assessment to potential partner organisations with a view to improving stakeholder engagement; 

• Development of material to enhance student engagement with Authentic Assessment including identifying possibilities for student co-creation;
• Implementation of systems to capture and disseminate Authentic Assessment activities across all programmes.