In this ‘Beyond the Lectern’ podcast, this is exactly what Liz Molloy advocates for – and inspiring stuff it is too! She recounts how her grass roots experience as an athlete led to a professional career rethinking how we give feedback and how we assess to promote learning. She encourages us to reflect on our own learning experiences and use that reflection to deign assessment activities creatively – challenging the status quo and traditions to seek meaningful assessment outcomes. She reminds us that self-assessment by assessment designers, and an acknowledgement of historical and habitual factors, are key to thoughtful and sustainable assessment design. And she reminds us to ask our learners what impact the assessment is having on them – and not to forget to tell them what we’ve done to respond to their feedback!
So if you think you need to reconsider your current assessment instruments – what Liz calls stepping back and “sharpening the saw” on our practice – then this could be a great place to start your thinking. Are your assessments doing what you intended? Are they meaningful to the learner beyond the assessment itself? It is time to shake things up? Is it time to wrestle with the sticky and tricky world of assessment and try an alternative?
Reference: Beyond the lectern Podcast Series. Episode 5: Assessment Design with Elizabeth Molloy