The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming educational practices, particularly in assessment. While AI may support the students in idea generation and summarization of source materials, it also introduces challenges related to content validity, academic integrity, and the development of critical thinking skills. Educators need…

With increasing calls for authentic assessment in higher education, the reference point for authenticity has been questioned. Typically, researchers define authenticity in relation to purposes of higher education, which are contested. Advancing the notion of educational authenticity rather than professional, societal, disciplinary, or…

Promoting critical thinking (CT) skills has largely attracted the concern of numerous relevant stakeholders, including teachers, students, and policymakers, with the assumption that CT is a vitally learned skill needed by graduates. This study explores the extent of classroom-based assessment strategies used to promote the CT ability of…

This paper discusses a 12-week, 15-credit module taught to second year undergraduates during semester 2 of 2017-18 academic year. The module, entitled 'Deschooling', aimed to explore notions of emancipatory and critical pedagogy, control and coercion in the education system. Rather than 'teach' these concepts as abstract academic theory, I aimed…

Gamification is increasingly being implemented in higher education to engage students. This article presents a gamified pedagogical exercise intended to motivate students to consider how their in-person and digital behaviors affect their personal brands. Students receive and lose points for various behaviors and reflect on whether these behaviors…

In this article, the authors report on the results of a three-year study they conducted on assessment practices in general education courses at Duke University as part of a three-institution (Duke, the University of Kansas, and the University of Nebraska) research project funded by the Spencer Foundation. At all three institutions, researchers…

Learning outcomes within the context of assessing general education competencies have gained increasing attention within higher education. Accrediting bodies have increased standards for the assessment of general education competencies, employers continue to indicate graduates from higher education institutions are not prepared for success in the…

In March 2020, institutions abruptly pivoted to remote instruction, sending students, faculty, and staff away from college campuses in response to COVID-19. In June 2020, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) launched a survey to capture a snapshot of assessment-related changes made during Spring 2020 in response to the…

This practice-sharing piece outlines two main approaches to flexible summative assessment schemes, including for each approach one example from my practice and another from a published study. The bento approach offers the same assessments to all students but a variety of grade weighting schemes, allowing students to change weighting during the…

Assessment and evaluation practices within honors programs have attracted considerable attention within the honors academic community, e.g., the spring/summer 2006 volume of the "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council." Calls for carefully created and constructed assessment activities within honors programs have met with mixed…

This paper considers feedback in the context of modularised programmes in higher education in the UK. It is argued that the self-contained nature of modular assessment may limit feedback dialogue between staff and students to assignment-specific issues, and may impede student progress towards holistic programme-level aims and outcomes. A feedback…

Small group work is common practice in higher education. However, empirical research on students' emotions related to group work is still relatively scarce. Particularly, little is known about students' appraisals of a group task as antecedents of emotions arising in the context of group work. This paper provides a first attempt to systematically…

Spanning the 2015-2016 academic year, Cal Poly Communications Studies Sr. Lecturer, Martin Mehl, and Lead Instructional Designer, Luanne Fose, from the Cal Poly Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, conducted a formal, institute-wide research pilot on whether or not video assessment can improve faculty feedback for student assignments.…

In this paper, the effect of continuous assessment on the learning outcomes of two chemical engineering courses is studied over a several-year period. Average grades and passing percentages of courses after the final examination are reported and also student feedback on the courses is collected. The results indicate significantly better learning…

Technology can change higher education by empowering students to make an impact on the world as undergraduates. Done systematically, this would allow institutions to close the credibility gap with an increasingly dubious public. Authentic student achievements that are addressed to a "real world" audience can lead to richly detailed…