John Biggs
Title: Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment: Deriving an Appropriate Model

Teaching and learning take place in a whole system. In a poor system, the components are not necessarily integrated. In that case, assessment is often carried out in a quantitative fashion that misses the higher quality learning that the curriculum requires. In an integrated system, on the other hand, all aspects of teaching and assessment are tuned to support the high level learning the curriculum should specify. Constructive alignment (CA) is such a system, and this provides the theoretical framework for the Assessment Project.

Georgine Loacker
Title: Enhancing Assessment through Teaching and Learning

Can’t we assume that assessment exists to improve student learning? If so, shouldn’t it be something that individual students each see sparking their learning and helping them improve it? Then, how can we justify keeping assessment separate from the student’s learning process, something ominous or meaningless laid on from outside or above? Can the teaching and learning process result in a new kind of improved assessment? There are multiple ways to accomplish this. My position, though, is that whatever unique educational approach an institution generates must proceed from educational principles shared by the faculty, staff, and administration and put into practice by faculty in their teaching. Otherwise, how can we claim integrity and accountability for an educational program to all stakeholders—including students? Specific examples show how such a process can work for program and institutional assessment as well as for assessment for the sake of an individual student’s development and credit for achievement.

Lewis Elton
Title: New Approaches to Assessment in Practice

While the principles of new approaches to assessment are generic, i.e. they are essentially the same for all disciplines, their application in practice is strongly discipline dependent. My paper will outline the route from generic principles, rooted in the basic theories of Higher Education and of Change Management, and conveyed through faculty development, to discipline specific applications in practice, with illustrations taken from different disciplines.

As this is the final key note address, I will also attempt to refer to relevant aspects of earlier contributions to the conference.