Assessing project work by external examiners

Over a number of years the external examiners of a regional statistics course for 18-year-old students in schools and colleges in the United Kingdom became aware that the method of assessment was distorting the teaching and learning process, that the things being assessed were not the things that the examiners thought most important for the students to know. This chapter shows how the assessment methods were changed by adding in a compulsory project and reflects on the impact of this change on the teaching and learning of statistics.