What is worth researching in assessment and feedback in higher education?
David Boud, Alfred Deakin Professor and Foundation Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, Deakin University, Australia
David Boud
Much research has been published about assessment and feedback, so what is worth investigating now and what can an individual or team contribute? The workshop is about the problem of what to focus attention on and what kinds of contributions to research can be made by those occupying a variety of different roles, particularly that of university teacher. Both the most interesting and the most uninteresting work has been generated by university teachers exploring their own practices.
What can make the difference between work that is more likely to be of wider interest and be taken up and that which may languish in an outlet that no one will notice? Which are hot and emerging issues, and which are rather tired?
The workshop focuses on researching in ways that will lead to worthwhile outcomes both for ourselves and for others beyond our own immediate context. It involves the generation of ideas for research and consider ways to critique and improve them. It will explore outlets for research and what needs to be considered at the very start of a research process. It is designed both for those who have already undertaken research in this area and for novices. It is not about doing research as such but thinking about what is worth doing.
Participants are invited to come to the workshop with ideas about topics in assessment and feedback they think are worth examining, but which also might be able to be pursued in their own context. These do not have to be well-formulated or thought through—there will be opportunities for doing that during the session. To stimulate thinking about topics, see the titles from the latest list of papers accepted by the key journal Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showAxaArticles?journalCode=caeh20
Biographical note
David Boud is Deakin Distinguished Professor and Foundation Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia. He is also Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney.
He has published extensively on teaching, learning and assessment in higher and professional education. He has been a pioneer in developing learning-centred approaches to teaching and assessment. Much of his earlier work on assessment was drawn from his own teaching experiences. He has published in and been a reviewer for almost all the major journals in higher education.
In recent years he has focused on research on assessment and feedback, and he has been a major figure in changing ideas, for example, on sustainable assessment, the development of students’ evaluative judgement, seeing feedback differently and feedback literacy. He is strongly committed to collaboration in research and is currently one of the most highly cited scholars in the world in the field of higher education (Google Scholar h-index of 112).
For further information: https://experts.deakin.edu.au/28619-david-boud/about
ahenetwork.org 