Learning Assurance professional development

The Faculty of Arts hosted a number of seminars, talks, workshops and discussion sessions focused on learning assurance and related areas of teaching and learning. These sessions were designed for all academic staff and provided by Academic Skills, Learning Environments, the CSHE and others.

Putting assessment, course objectives and graduate outcomes into perspective

Professor Royce Sadler, University of Queensland

The current national and institutional settings for the assessment of student learning are that graduate attributes, course outcomes, assessment tasks and marking should all be aligned and pull in the same direction. This naturally has implications for the way we structure programs and courses and carry out assessment. In this address, the relationship between these different aspects is analysed, bearing in mind the various planning and practical constraints within which academic teachers and tutors work. Some matters need to be rethought and reworked so as to achieve better outcomes – but without making things more labour intensive than they are now.

Professor Sadler, an internationally recognised expert on formative assessment design and assessing academic standards at tertiary level, will discuss his views on the relationship between assessment and learning drawn from his influential work in this area over more than three decades. View Honorary Professor Royce Sadler’s biography.

Engaging assessment: options, ways and means

Travis Cox, Learning Environments and Simon Evans, Academic Skills

The essay remains the primary assessment tool in Arts, valued for its specific strengths in disciplinary discourses. But there are other options. This workshop considers other forms of assessment in use across the University. These assessment tasks can complement the essay, helping to ensure that all outcomes are being assessed, and also helping to equip students with a broader range of academic skills.

Engaging assessment presentation slides

Designing assessments for your subject

Clare Rhoden, SCC and Learning Environments and Simon Evans, Academic Skills

In this workshop our aim is to consider how we might optimise the alignment of subject content and student outcomes through assessment tasks. Our questions include: Do the subject assessment tasks measure what we want measured? Do students receive formative feedback? Do the assessment tasks match the expectations of students at the specific year level?

Designing assessments for your subject presentation slides

Rethinking assessment in higher education: issues, challenges and new approaches

Dr Chi Baik, Centre for the Study of Higher Education

This seminar critically examined current approaches to assessment and asked: Are we assessing what we should be assessing in higher education? Chi discussed possibilities for rethinking assessment and curriculum design to focus more on the higher-order learning that characterises university education.