The scenario regarding Boris seems to be directly built on the following paragraph from Gibbs and Simpson (2005):
“It is a common observation of higher education teachers that if
coursework is taken away from a module due to resource constraints,
students simply do not do the associated studying; for example
students will rarely write unassessed essays. It is argued that you
have to assess everything that moves in order to capture students’
time and energy. However, coursework does not have to be marked
to generate the necessary learning. Forbes & Spence (1991) reported
a study of assessment on an engineering course at Strathclyde
University. When lecturers stopped marking weekly problem sheets
because they were simply too busy, students did indeed stop tackling
the problems, and their exam marks went down as a consequence.
But when lecturers introduced periodic peer-assessment of the
problem sheets — as a course requirement but without the marks
contributing — students’ exam marks increased dramatically to a level
well above that achieved previously when lecturers did the marking.
What achieved the learning was the quality of student engagement
in learning tasks, not teachers doing lots of marking. The trick
when designing assessment regimes is to generate engagement with
learning tasks without generating piles of marking” (p. 6).
The trick for Boris will be coming up with a peer-assessed periodic review of the periodic table.
Reference
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf