Reconfiguring the boundaries between learning and assessment in a Vector Calculus course for engineering students

The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent calls for self-isolation necessitated a shift to a remote fully online teaching and learning environment. This required a reflection on traditional ways of teaching, ways we expect our students to learn and how we use assessment. Effective facilitation and monitoring of student learning on an online platform presented a challenge. Our experience has shown that students were often unable to identify gaps, establish, understand, and develop their own learning in the challenging Vector Calculus course. An appropriate online assessment platform offered to address these challenges by motivating students to learn, through focusing their attention on the concepts to be mastered whilst developing their capacity to self-assess. Importantly, this online assessment system provided student performance feedback to the course facilitator allowing the design of necessary support for successful student learning. In this paper the design of a Vector Calculus course and the various learning activities that were coordinated to achieve assessment as learning for 60 Vector Calculus students, taking their assessments through an online assessment platform is discussed.