Your perfect companion to building confident assessment in teaching and learning in higher education. Assessment is a central part of teaching and learning in higher education and an area in which many university teachers lack confidence. Designed to work across academic disciplines, this is a practical, theory-informed resource for anyone in the higher education sector. It offers an in-depth view of assessment, exploring current practice and contemporary challenges. It offers guidance on contextual assessment design and the teaching that can support this, alongside a deep dive on marking, feedback and common assessment challenges. The final third of the book offers practical templates for a wide range of common assessment types including case studies, competence portfolios, essays and dissertations. Rachel Forsyth is an educational developer who works at Lund University, Sweden.

Educational assessment is important. But in the twenty-first century it is easy to feel that schooling and other phases of education are shaped entirely by certain assessments, and that assessment is only about exam results. The idea that test grades can accurately describe the aims and outcomes of education is unfair and reductive. Yet it is a pervasive and persuasive discourse. This book is about such discourses - the stories we tell each other - and how they impact public trust and confidence in educational assessment. It explains the roots and nature of assessment discourses, and proposes a restructuring of the debates in order to rebuild public confidence. It aims to challenge dominant assessment discourses and demands a more nuanced, informed debate about what happens in and beyond schools, and how this influences public thinking. Questioning the status quo needs buy-in from policymakers, teachers, parents and students, and from the broader public: from journalists, you, me, our friends and our children. Using examples from international settings to explore the nature of trust in assessment discourses, Rebuilding Public Confidence in Educational Assessment shows how these discourses can be reframed so that all aspects of the assessment system - policymaking, school planning, home practice with students - can be undertaken with confidence.

This book offers fresh perspectives on the challenges of assessment and feedback in higher education. A must-read for university leaders, academics, and educational developers, it asks ‘what if’ questions to unlock some of the systemic problems of assessment and feedback. It shifts the debate to focus on students’ experience at a programme level, introducing a different way of thinking about assessment and feedback, and advancing the value of theories of alienation and engagement. Based on the ‘Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment’ (TESTA) project, the book discusses a method for understanding the impact of assessment and feedback on student learning. Drawing on evidence from TESTA, it provides practical insights about changing programme assessment patterns to foster student agency and engagement. The book gives impetus to changing the design assessment and feedback, inviting academics, educational leaders, and students into more transparent, open, and shared decision-making about assessment and feedback beyond the module level. This key title is designed to support academics and educational leaders to making sustainable and systemic improvements to the pedagogy of assessment. It expands on good principles, practices, and theories about how students learn from assessment and feedback by paying attention to a programme level perspective of the student experience.

Co-published with AIR.Published in association with Assessment and accountability are now inescapable features of the landscape of higher education, and ensuring that these assessments are psychometrically sound has become a high priority for accrediting agencies and therefore also for higher education institutions. Bringing together the higher education assessment literature with the psychometric literature, this book focuses on how to practice sound assessment.This volume provides comprehensive and detailed descriptions of tools for and approaches to assessing student learning outcomes in higher education. The book is guided by the core purpose of assessment, which is to enable faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals with the information they need to increase student learning by making changes in policies, curricula, and other programs.The book is divided into three sections: overview, assessment in higher education, and case studies. The central section looks at direct and indirect measures of student learning, and how to assure the validity, reliability, and fairness of both types. The first six chapters (the first two sections) alternate chapters written by experts in assessment in higher education and experts in psychometrics. The remaining three chapters are applications of assessment practices in three higher education institutions. Finally, the book includes a glossary of key terms in the field.

Throughout higher education assessment is changing, driven by increased class size, changing curricula and the need to support students better. At the same time assessment regulations and external quality assurance demands are constraining assessment options, driven by worries about standards, reliability and plagiarism. Innovative Assessment in Higher Education explores the difficulty of changing assessment in sometimes unhelpful contexts. Topics discussed include: problems with traditional assessment methods rationales behind different kinds of innovation in assessment complex assessment contexts in which teachers attempt to innovate innovation in assessment within a range of academic settings theoretical and empirical support for innovations within higher education. More than a ‘how to do it’ manual, this book offers a unique mix of useful pragmatism and scholarship. A vital resource for higher education teachers and their educational advisors, it provides a fundamental analysis of the role and purpose of assessment and how change can be managed without compromising standards.

Issues in Teaching and Education Policy, Research, and Special Topics: 2011 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ eBook that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Teaching and Education Policy, Research, and Special Topics. The editors have built Issues in Teaching and Education Policy, Research, and Special Topics: 2011 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Teaching and Education Policy, Research, and Special Topics in this eBook to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Teaching and Education Policy, Research, and Special Topics: 2011 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

This book examines not only the assessment of student learning but the assessment of institutions, the programmes they offer, and the teaching they provide. It describes in detail the significant developments that have taken place over the last decade in the field, and clarifies the different meanings of the term assessment that are now in use.

In this valuable resource, well-known scholars present a detailed understanding of contemporary theories and practices in the fields of measurement, assessment, and evaluation, with guidance on how to apply these ideas for the benefit of students and institutions. Bringing together terminology, analytical perspectives, and methodological advances, this second edition facilitates informed decision-making while connecting the latest thinking in these methodological areas with actual practice in higher education. This research handbook provides higher education administrators, student affairs personnel, institutional researchers, and faculty with an integrated volume of theory, method, and application.

"As an overview, Developing Effective Assessment in Higher Education makes a very useful contribution to assessment literature, providing a publication that is relevant and accessible to practitioners whilst giving rigorous exploration of issues associated with student assessment. It should find a readership on that basis and will be welcomed as a considered and insightful contribution to the literature on student assessment." Higher Education Review What are the main issues when considering the design and management of effective assessment strategies for academic programmes? How should lecturers design and use assessment in university so that it helps students to learn, as well as judging their achievement? How can students be prepared for assessment, including peer, self and group assessment? This book provides comprehensive practical guidance on managing and improving assessment within higher education. It tackles all stages in the assessment cycle including: Assessment design Preparing students for assessment Marking and moderation Providing feedback Quality assurance It also provides a concise introduction to the research literature on assessment which will inform practice, debate, programme enhancement and practitioner research within university departments, teaching teams and courses for higher education teachers. The practical guidance in the book is substantiated with reference to relevant research and policy. In particular, it considers how the different purposes of assessment create conflicting demands for staff; often characterised by the tension between attempting to support student learning whilst meeting imperatives for quality assurance and demonstrable maintenance of standards. Issues are debated using concrete examples and workable solutions are illustrated. Consideration is also given to the management of assessment as well as to how new technologies might be used to develop assessment methods and enhance student learning. Developing Effective Assessment in Higher Education is key reading for both new and experienced lecturers, programme leaders and academic developers, and will enhance their efforts to use assessment to improve students’ learning as well as to grade them fairly, reliably and efficiently.

Assessment really does matter in higher education. Internationally, academics - and those who support them - are seeking better ways to assess students, recognizing that diverse methods are available which may solve many of the problems associated with the evaluation of learning. Assessment Matters in Higher Education provides both theoretical perspectives and pragmatic advice on how to conduct effective assessment. It draws clearly on both relevant research and on its contributors' practical first hand experience (warts and all!). It asks, for example: how can assessment methods best become an integral part of learning? what strategies can be used to make assessment fairer, more consistent and more efficient? how effective are innovative approaches to assessment, and in what contexts do they prosper? to what extent can students become involved in their own assessment? how can we best assess learning in professional practice contexts? This is an important resource for all academics and academic managers involved in assessing their students.