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In recent years, research and practice focused on staff and students working in partnership to co-design learning and teaching in higher education, has increased. However, within staff-student partnerships a focus on assessment is relatively uncommon, with fewer examples evident in the literature. In this paper, we take the stance that all assessment can be oriented for learning and that students' learning is enhanced by improving their level of assessment literacy. A small study within Public Policy at a Scottish university was undertaken that involved a range of different adaptations to assessment and feedback in which students were invited to become partners in assessment. We argue that a partnership approach, designed to democratise the assessment process, not only offered students greater agency in their own and their peers' learning, but also helped students to enhance their assessment literacy. Although staff and students reported experiencing a sense of risk, there was immense compensation through increased motivation and a sense of being part of an engaged learning community. Implications for partnership in assessment are discussed and explored further. We assert that adopting staff-student partnership in assessment and more democratic classroom practices can have a wide range of positive benefits.

Service-learning is a pedagogy that combines academic study with service to the community. Voluntary work placements are integral to service-learning and offer students an ideal opportunity to develop their employability skills and attributes. In a service-learning course, it was considered good practice to raise students’ awareness of the development of these skills and attributes. To enable this, the assessment in the course was adapted accordingly, and thus an innovative, summatively co-assessed oral presentation was introduced. This study investigates the effects of using this type of assessment, in which students were required to give an oral presentation of their critical reflections on the employability skills and attributes they had developed during the course. This practitioner research study was a small project using qualitative semi-structured interviews and a focus group with students engaged in service-learning. Although this study uses service-learning pedagogy as its basis, the concept and practice of summative co-assessment is transferable to other academic courses.

The aims of this paper are to examine and critically evaluate a selection of different technological methods that was specifically chosen for the alignment with, and potential to enhance extant assessment for learning practice. The underpinning perspectives are that (a) both formative and summative assessment are valuable opportunities for learning and (b) using technology may enhance learning in assessment and feedback processes. Drawing on the literature and empirical evidence from a research study in a Scottish university, the advantages and drawbacks of using technology are examined. It is asserted that by adopting a flexible approach and taking small incremental steps, the use of different types of technology can be beneficial in facilitating effective assessment for learning and feedback in higher education.

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