Assessment & Feedback:
Ungrading
Narrative evaluation
Designing assessments that reflect practice
Feedback loops
In higher education, the terms assessing and assessment are often used as if they mean the same thing. At first glance, both relate to the act of “judging” student learning. However, a closer look reveals an important difference, one that influences how students experience learning and how educators design their teaching. Assessment: The ProductWhen we…
Assessment and feedback in higher education have long been dominated by grades, rubrics, and numerical scores. While these methods offer efficiency and standardisation, they often miss the deeper story of learning. A grade may indicate where a student’s work stands on a scale, but it rarely reveals how they arrived there, what they struggled with,…
The rapid advancement of digital tools has transformed higher education, offering students unprecedented access to information and new ways to “learn”. Yet alongside these benefits, institutions face a pressing challenge: maintaining academic integrity in an era where shortcuts and cognitive offloading are easier than ever to access. Concerns about plagiarism, rote memorisation, and contract cheating…
For centuries, grading has been the dominant language of education. From Yale’s early descriptors in the 1700s to the familiar A–F scale, grades were never created to capture learning but to sort students. Despite their longevity, grades remain a blunt instrument, reducing the complexity of the student experience into a single symbol. The critical question…
Higher education faces a critical juncture with rising student enrolments, diverse student populations, and AI’s growing role in assessments. These challenges demand reforms in both current and past educational structures, moving toward a model better suited to today’s students, job market, and societal needs. One issue is the persistent view of students as passive learners,…