Effectiveness of New Innovations Introduced to the Continuous Assessment Mechanism of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education Programme

Two research studies (Lekamge & Jayathilake, 2002; Jayathilake, 1996) which focused on the Continuous Assessment (CA) mechanism of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) had identified several problems such as lack of quality of the set assignments, limited comments on assignments, discrepancies among marking examiners, ill practices among student teachers and high turnround time of assignments and suggested long term and short term measures to those problems. As a result, the Faculty introduced several innovations namely course team approach, training workshops for marking examiners, Activity Based Assignment Day Schools and appointment of Centre coordinators for improving the quality of the CA mechanism. Having implemented those innovations for nearly three years, it has necessitated an exploratory research study to examine the effectiveness in improving the quality of the CA mechanism and to reveal how it could be further modified to maximize their potentials. The sample of the study included 290 student teachers representing four regional and two study centres of the OUSL, 104 marking examiners and 21 visiting academics of those centres. Exploratory interviews, questionnaires and direct observations were used as the main data collection methods of the study. They revealed that the majority of student teachers, visiting academics and marking examiners were satisfied with the new innovations and admired the positive changes taken place in setting, marking and monitoring of assignments. Finally the study recommended several improvements to those strategies which would further maximize the benefits to all stakeholders.