Abstract

Learning and teaching have made huge leaps in innovations in HE in the last 30 years to produce a plethora of inclusive, student-centred practices. Strict accreditation and validation processes in assessment have been erroneously perceived to prevent or curtail innovative, inclusive, student-centred assessment practices. In a context where students are legal adults with family, financial, and socio-political responsibilities, it seems anachronistic that transparency of decision-making on their work, influencing grades and future employment prospects is forbidden. This is done by excluding them from final, assessed, and accredited work. Furthermore, this is illogical as assessment and learning theories demonstrate the necessity to use innovative and inclusive assessment to support learning.
This presentation demonstrates how inclusive, transparent assessment may be used within current accreditation and validation regulations to the benefit of tutors and students. An innovative self-assessment model shows how students may develop assessment expertise and literacies, within a shared forum: this permits an increasing understanding of assessment and quality issues which will build on their resilience and self-regulation processes.
By sharing assessment expertise and processes, tutors benefit because students will no longer need to challenge their assessment results, as they have understood the processes, products and protocols of assessment for themselves. Tutors will not need to inform students that they have failed an assessment because students will have understood and learned about the quality of their work before the tutor feedback and grade.
Assessment is no longer the battleground of shattered hopes fears, but a forum for learning and progress.