Engaging tertiary educators in the development of their assessment literacy

Abstract

Using assessment to inform teaching and to measure learning outcomes is of critical importance in higher education. However, many tertiary educators are not sufficiently knowledgeable or prepared to do this confidently. This paper suggests that tertiary educators could be given tools and encouraged to exert agency in their own assessment literacy development. It examines the application of one potential tool, the SALRubric (Edwards, 2017), which describes stages of development in ten dimensions of summative assessment literacy. The tool’s structure and intent make it possible for the rubric to be modified to incorporate other content and context-dependent dimensions of assessment within a tertiary setting. A process through which appropriate dimensions could be identified is described so that the resulting co-constructed rubric could be used for both peer assessment and self-assessment by tertiary educators. Initial work using the SALRubric indicates that this has the potential to lead tertiary educators to an increased awareness of dimensions of assessment literacy and more active engagement in their teaching, thereby enhancing learning for their students.