We undertook a study to investigate the views of both students and staff in our department towards assessment in mathematics as a precursor to considering increasing the diversity of assessment types. In a survey and focus group there was reasonable agreement amongst the students with regards major themes such as mode of assessment. However this level of agreement was not seen amongst the staff where discussions regarding diversity in mathematics assessment definitely revealed a difference of opinion. As a consequence we feel that the greatest barriers to increasing diversity may be with staff and so more efforts are needed to communicate to staff the advantages and disadvantages in order to give them greater confidence in trying a range of assessment types.
