Higher education is infatuated with numbers. Educators assign students a mark for an assessment, combine those marks into a final unit grade, and then institutions combine grades from multiple units into a Grade Point Average (GPA). The result is a wonderfully convenient numerical value. Years of learning ultimately represented by […]
Assessment & Feedback - Innovation & Future of Higher Education - Student Learning & Engagement
If Assessment Ends at the Grade, What Was It For?
In higher education, students often complete an assessment, submit it, receive a grade, and then move on. Academics evaluate and mark the work, offer feedback, and focus on the next task. The assessment has effectively fulfilled its purpose: generating evidence, informing judgments, and contributing to the final results. But has […]
Assessment & Feedback - Reflections & Provocations
The Assessment Illusion: Why Precision in Grading is a Myth
Higher education frequently treats grades as exact indicators of learning. For example, one student might get 74%, while another earns 75%. Similarly, one might be awarded a Credit and the other a Distinction. Transcripts, GPA calculations, scholarship rankings, and postgraduate admissions all operate under the assumption that these distinctions are […]
Assessment & Feedback - Reflections & Provocations - Student Learning & Engagement - Teaching Practice
What If Failure Isn’t Failure? Rethinking Learning in Higher Education
Watch anyone engaged in genuine learning, whether it’s a child wobbling on their bike, a filmmaker wrestling with an edit, or a student drafting an essay, and one thing becomes clear: learning is messy. It’s tangled, unpredictable, and full of false starts. The progress of learning never moves in a straight […]
Assessment & Feedback - Innovation & Future of Higher Education - Reflections & Provocations - Student Learning & Engagement
Seeing the Thinking: What Creative Arts Assessment Practices Can Offer Other Disciplines
Generative AI has forced higher education into a renewed conversation about assessment, which has been long overdue. Universities and educators are now asking familiar assessment questions with urgency: What exactly are we assessing? How do we recognise evidence of student thinking? And what does authentic learning look like when polished outputs can […]