Explores changing perspectives and innovations in assessment in light of recent theorising and empirical research

Explores changing perspectives and innovations in assessment in light of recent theorising and empirical research ...

Teachers spend much of their time on assessment, yet many higher education teachers have received minimal guidance on assessment design and marking. This means assessment can often be a source of stress and frustration. Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education aims to solve these problems. Offering a concise overview of assessment theory and practice, this guide provides teachers with the help they need.

Assessment in higher education is an area of intense current interest, not least due to its central role in student learning processes. Excellence in University Assessment is a pioneering text which contributes to the theory and practice of assessment through detailed discussion and analysis of award-winning teaching across multiple disciplines. It provides inspiration and strategies for higher education practitioners to improve their understanding and practice of assessment. The book uses an innovative model of learning-oriented assessment to analyze the practice of university teachers who have been recipients of teaching awards for excellence. It critically scrutinizes their methods in context in order to develop key insights into effective teaching, learning and assessment processes. Pivotal topics include: Competing priorities in assessment and ways of tackling them; The nature of quality assessment task design; The student experience of assessment; Promoting student engagement with feedback. An indispensable contribution to assessment in higher education, Excellence in University Assessment is a valuable guide for university leaders, middle managers, staff developers, teachers and researchers interested in the crucial topic of assessment.

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.

Contextualising why assessment is still the single most important factor affecting student learning in higher education, this second edition of Innovative Assessment in Higher Education: A Handbook for Academic Practitioners offers a critical discourse about the value of assessment for learning alongside practical suggestions about how to enhance the student experience of assessment and feedback. With 17 new chapters this edition: contextualises assessment within the current higher education landscape; explores how student, parent and government expectations impact on assessment design; presents case studies on how to develop, incorporate and assess employability skills; reviews how technology and social media can be used to enhance assessment and feedback; provides examples and critical review of the use and development of feedback practices and how to assess professional, creative and performance-based subjects; offers guidance on how to develop assessment that is inclusive and enables all students to advance their potential. Bridging the gap between theory and the practical elements of assessment, Innovative Assessment in Higher Education: A Handbook for Academic Practitioners is an essential resource for busy academics looking to make a tangible difference to their academic practice and their students’ learning. This practical and accessible guide will aid both new and more experienced practitioners looking to learn more about how and why assessment in higher education can make such a difference to student learning.

This book is the first to explore the big question of how assessment can be refreshed and redesigned in an evolving digital landscape. There are many exciting possibilities for assessments that contribute dynamically to learning. However, the interface between assessment and technology is limited. Often, assessment designers do not take advantage of digital opportunities. Equally, digital innovators sometimes draw from models of higher education assessment that are no longer best practice. This gap in thinking presents an opportunity to consider how technology might best contribute to mainstream assessment practice. Internationally recognised experts provide a deep and unique consideration of assessment’s contribution to the technology-mediated higher education sector. The treatment of assessment is contemporary and spans notions of ‘assessment for learning’, measurement and the roles of peer and self within assessment. Likewise the view of educational technology is broad and includes gaming, learning analytics and new media. The intersection of these two worlds provides opportunities, dilemmas and exemplars. This book serves as a reference for best practice and also guides future thinking about new ways of conceptualising, designing and implementing assessment.

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Web-Based Learning, ICWL 2009, held in Aachen, Germany, in August 2009. The 38 revised full papers and 14 short papers are presented together with three invited papers and were carefully reviewed and selected from 106 submissions. They deal with topics such as technology enhanced learning, web-based learning for oriental languages, mobile learning, social software and Web 2.0 for technology enhanced learning, learning resource deployment, organization and management, design, model and framework of E-learning systems, e-learning metadata and standards, educational gaming and multimedia storytelling for learning, as well as practice and experience sharing and pedagogical Issues.

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.