Confident Assessment - Temacafé 2025-04-10
When you look at the content of foundation/basic courses in teaching and learning at most universities, assessment is always mentioned, but it is rarely covered in depth. This is to be expected when time is so short, and most new teachers just want to get on with the immediate task of planning their teaching sessions and managing their classrooms. But assessment/examination is critical in relation to constructive alignment, to student motivation, and to maintaining academic standards in higher education, and it is important that we find ways to keep teachers thinking about the quality and effectiveness of assessment. Having assessment literate teachers should be more able to cope with changes in the external situation such as new technological tools, as well as to make them more confident to design and implement novel and engaging examination tasks.
In this webinar (theme café), I will talk about the challenges of improving assessment literacy across large, diverse, institutions and how academic developers might support the development of confident assessors in every subject area.
Rachael Forsyth is an academic developer at Lund University. She was previously head of academic development at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Link to event referred to in the talk:
Invitation for May 14 in Lund: Optionality in Assessment : Friend or Foe? | Transforming education in a digital world
Boud, D., & Dawson, P. (2021). What feedback literate teachers do: an empirically-derived competency framework. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1910928
Forsyth, R. (2022). Confident assessment in higher education. Sage.
Price, M., Rust, C., O'Donovan, B., Handley, K., & Bryant, R. (2012). Assessment literacy: the foundation for improving student learning. ASKe, Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development.