Parallel session Linking skills, feedback and assessment to develop student agency and achievement Laura Ritchie

This session focused on wanting to give students freedom in assessment. We as lecturers can invite students to do things but we can’t make them. We have to engage them and develop authentic assessment for learning. This has to be unique to the discipline and encourage students to seek help as they need it. We need to prepare them so they are self-regulating.

 Laura then asked all the participants to undertake an activity based on the session so far. She asked us all in groups to produce an essay on what she had said so far. This was really interesting with five groups exploring a range of things such as what is an essay? Did the essay have to be written or could pictures be used? What was being assessed? We were like students and did not understand what we needed to do.

 This led to a discussion about whether students could choose the format of their assessment as long as they had the criterion and meet these. Essays could become more multi-dimensional with video clips and pictures inserted.