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Vol. 5 No. 1 (2008)

Published: 1 January 2008

Articles

  • Editorial 5.1

    Geraldine E. Lefoe, D. Boud

    We welcome you to the first edition of JUTLP for 2008. This special edition is focussed on meeting the needs of practice through an examination of changes in assessment at the institutional, faculty, course and subject level. The Special Edition was prompted by a roundtable 'Assessing student learning: Using interdisciplinary synergies to develop good teaching and assessment practice' in Sydney on Tuesday 6th September, 2007 sponsored by the Carrick Institute (now renamed the Australian Learning and Teaching Council). The forum hosted 45 people from around Australia and New Zealand to discuss strategies for improving assessment in the higher education sector. Participants, and those who expressed an interest in the Forum, were invited to develop papers and submit them for consideration in this special issue.

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  • Using a Cross-Institutional Collaborative Model to Deliver a National Roundtable Conference on Assessment: A Case Study

    N. Brown, J. Littrich

    This paper describes the organisation, preparation and delivery of a major project, namely, a national roundtable conference on assessment, in the context of a wider project involving the development and application of a model of collaboration between tertiary institutions based on a distributive leadership framework. It analyses feedback received from round table participants and comments on both the utility and the limitations of the adopted model for the purpose of the round table project.

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  • Assessment in First Year University: A Model to Manage Transition

    J. A. Taylor

    For most students assessment guides their study and learning practice. Yet in the literature associated with the first year of study at university, few have mobilised the power of assessment to develop and engage first year undergraduate students. This paper presents a model of assessment for first year students which separates the semester into three overlapping assessment phases: assessment for transition, assessment for development and assessment for achievement. The implementation and usefulness of the model is supported by examples from mathematics, engineering, computing, communication and nursing studies at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Particular attention is paid to assessments for transition which occur early in the semester and are linked more closely with processes than specific content. Evidence is collated on the success of assessments in improving the participation of students, especially distance education students.

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  • Integrating Graduate Attributes with Assessment Criteria in Business Education: Using an Online Assessment System

    D. Thompson, L. Treleaven, P. Kamvounias, B. Beem, E. Hill

    This paper describes a study of the integration of graduate attributes into Business education using an online system to facilitate the process. ‘ReView’ is a system that provides students with criteria-based tutor feedback on assessment tasks and also provides opportunities for online student self-assessment. Setup incorporates a process of ‘review’ whereby assessment criteria are grouped into graduate attribute categories and reworded to make explicit the qualities, knowledge and skills that are valued in student performance. Through this process, academics clarify and make explicit the alignment of assessment tasks to learning objectives and graduate attribute development across units and levels of a program of study. Its application in three undergraduate Business units was undertaken as a collaborative action research project to improve alignment of graduate attributes with assessment, identification of assessment criteria and feedback to students. This paper describes the use of Review and presents an analysis of post-ReView data that has institutional implications for improving assessment and self-assessment practices.

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  • Using Assessment Practice to Evaluate the Legal Skills Curriculum

    M. T. O'Brien, J. Littrich

    A comprehensive audit of the skills curriculum offered to students in a Bachelor of Laws program yielded important insights about the collective impact of assessment tasks on the hidden and operational skills curriculum. This qualitative case study supports the views (1) that assessment tasks provide significant skills practice and performance opportunities for students; (2) that assessment provides students with important cues about what type of learning is valued; and (3) that review of assessment practices across the curriculum can provide important information for curricular reform.

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  • Graphic Design Education: A Revised Assessment Approach to Encourage Deep Learning

    G. Ellmers, M. Foley, S. Bennett

    In this paper we outline the review and iterative refinement of assessment procedures in a final year graphic design subject at the University of Wollongong. Our aim is to represent the main issues in assessing graphic design work, and informed by the literature, particularly 'notions of creativity' (Cowdroy & de Graaff, 2005), to develop and incorporate assessment procedures that allow creative ability to be assessed with greater transparency and objectivity. In the first iteration we developed a structure to standardise and clarify the existing model for the subject. Once this structure was in place we identified issues that would benefit from a review of the literature on assessment in the creative disciplines and the broader field of pedagogy. We marked the shift from surface approaches to learning to deep approaches to learning (Moon, 1999) at the point where we identified gaps in the learning outcomes. Our response was to move the focus from the outcome to the process and to introduce a staged assessment procedure with a stronger emphasis on formalised reflection, cycling throughout the design process. We divided the learning process into two streams: thinking and making as a means to clarify facets of learning. As we continue to refine this model we note and respond to the relationship between assessment and learning. We propose ideas for future investigation, based on identifying levels of design thinking achieved by students in the most recent iteration of the program, and how these might be improved.

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  • Assessment in the Professional Experience Context

    N. Brown

    Professional Experience is a key component of teacher education programs, bringing together the different disciplines of Education into a real-world setting. Helping pre-service teachers see theory in practice and begin to put theory into practice requires a close and explicit linkage between the coursework and practicum. A shared discourse that is accessible to pre-service teachers, field-based colleague teachers and university lecturers is an essential element in this process, particularly as there is an embedded assessment component. This project describes the evaluation of an assessment rubric developed for Professional Experience in the Bachelor of Teaching at UTAS.

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