What are we assessing for?
Does conventional assessment undermine learning outcomes?
Presentation slides
Speakers: Prof. David Boud, University of Technology Sydney
Date : FRI 15 MAY 2015
Time : 13:30 – 14:30
Venue : Large Moot Court, 2/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower
Abstract:
Outcomes-based frameworks for higher education courses have prompted curriculum innovation and rethinking of teaching and learning practices. However, with a few exceptions it has had less impact on assessment. This is surprising as the implications for assessment are profound. The presentation will focus on the tensions created for institutional assessment policy and disciplinary practice of the new approach. It will examine how conventional assessment assumptions and practices need to change in the context of global scrutiny of course provision. It will challenge nostrums such as reporting grades by course unit, percentage marking and the over-determination of requirements. It will suggest that a new focus on assessment is needed that places fostering long term learning as central, and which includes the fostering of student judgement, curation of outcomes by students and the creation of meaningful portrayals of achievements.
About the Speaker:
Prof. David Boud, University of Technology Sydney
David Boud is Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has published extensively on teaching, learning and assessment in higher and professional education in the international literature. He has held the positions of Dean of the University Graduate School, Head of the School of Adult and Language Education and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Education. In the area of assessment in higher education he has been a pioneer in developing learning-centred approaches to assessment across the disciplines, particularly in student self-assessment (Enhancing Learning through Self Assessment, Routledge 1995), building assessment skills for long-term learning (Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education: Learning for the Longer Term, Routledge, 2007) and new approaches to feedback (Feedback in Higher and Professional Education, Routledge, 2013. He is an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Senior Fellow and focused on ‘Student assessment for learning in and after courses’, which led to Assessment 2020: Seven Propositions for Assessment Reform in Higher Education. See www.assessmentfutures.com
