Juries are a high-stake practice in higher education to assess complex competencies. However common, research remains behind in detailing the psychometric qualities of juries, especially when using rubrics or rating scales as an assessment tool. In this study, I analyze a case of a jury assessment (N = 191) of product development where both…

Groupwork is a crucial aspect of work contexts and a key twenty first century skill. Assessment of groupwork provides a persistent challenge for educators in university contexts with students reporting experiences of unfairness from their peers during groupwork. This study developed a novel Peer Assessment Fairness Instrument to explore factors…

Formative assessment is widely accepted as being crucial to promoting student learning and, since 2010, the UK General Medical Council has mandated its use in workplace-based clinical training for all new doctors. As a result, the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) instituted a range of formative workplace-based assessments including the…

Over the past two decades, curricula in higher education have increasingly incorporated collaborative learning. However, due to (a) large variations in students' domain-specific abilities (e.g. knowledge and/or skills) and the effort they invest into the collaboration and (b) teachers' limited knowledge about how to assess collaborative learning,…

Research on professional assessment practice in higher education does not always take account of lecturers' perceptions and experiences, or their disciplinary context. This questionnaire study was designed to explore lecturers' views about three inter-related elements of professional assessment practice: assessment design, marking and feedback. It…

This article focuses on the validity of the new Narrative Reflection Assessment Rubric (NARRA) used to assess students' reflective narratives in higher education. We evaluate its formulation and usefulness from an instructional point of view. To those ends, we engage in both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis, using data from 100+…

Automated summary evaluation is proposed as an alternative to rubrics and multiple-choice tests in knowledge assessment. Inbuilt rubric is a recent Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) method that implements rubrics in an artificially-generated semantic space. It was compared with classical LSA's cosine-based methods assessing knowledge in a…

Assessment is an important element of any effective teaching and learning strategy. Designing an appropriate assessment strategy is a continual challenge for instructors because the assessment structure must be well aligned with the intended learning outcomes. Technological advances have led to an expansion of online and distance modes of course…

Effective teamwork skills are essential for success in an increasingly team-based workplace. However, research suggests that there is often confusion concerning how teamwork is measured and assessed, making it difficult to develop these skills in undergraduate curricula. The goal of the present study was to develop a sustainable tool for assessing…

A multi-disciplinary academic unit at a Canadian university completed an evaluation of course syllabi used in its undergraduate programmes over the previous five years. This paper examines the reasons for the evaluation, the processes employed to collect and analyse the data, and how the results will be incorporated into the next steps of the…

There has been increasing interest in assessing teachers' cross-curricular competencies as a result of reforms in teacher education in Switzerland. At Zurich University of Teacher Education, future students who do not have formal qualifications are required to pass several examinations and a test, which is known as an "assessment…

There have been calls in the literature for changes to assessment practices in higher education, to increase flexibility and give learners more control over the assessment process. This article explores the possibilities of allowing student choice in the format used to present their work, as a starting point for changing assessment, based on…

Moderation of student assessment is a critical component of teaching and learning in contemporary universities. Yet, despite this, it tends to be marked by idiosyncratic and sporadic processes informed by liminal understanding. This paper, in the light of forthcoming radical national requirements for the declaration of moderation processes in…

A study of sustainable assessment theory in nine tutorial courses at four colleges demonstrated that three long-term learning outcomes improved: Independence, Intellectual Maturity and Creativity. Eight of 10 traits associated with these outcomes were validated through internal reliability, faculty and student rubrics, and faculty case studies…

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether the Big Five personality traits and expected student grades relate to student evaluations of teachers and courses at the college level. Extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness were found to be personality traits favoured in instructors, whereas neuroticism was not. A…