Policy Imperatives on Assessment Issues

1. Policy Imperatives on Assessment Issues Institute for Curriculum Development and Learning Development (ICLD) Discussion ForumAC Tshivhase15 March 2005 Ext. 6789 Email: Tshivac@unisa.ac.za

2. 1. Introduction • Modern world/knowledge society: the questions of the role of universities in transformation and societal change • Who gets higher education? The access question • What do they get? The curriculum question • Where does it lead them to? Which is frequently seen as a labour market question but is also a political and social status question (a placement question) • (Brennan, King and Lebeau (2004)

3. What do they get? Curriculum question • Critical thinking vs. Competency debate • Worldwide (wider contexts/forces driving transformation) • Globalization • Democratization • ‘Supra-statism’ and modeling • Knowledge economies • Liberalization • Regulation and accountability • Africanization • Human Resource Development • Assessor training • Skills Development Act

4. 3. What is being transformed in society? • The economy: the formation of human capital • The polity; the creation and sustenance of state and civil institutions; the selection and socialization of political and social elites • The social structure: the basis of social stratification, the extent and mechanisms of mobility for different groups • The culture: the production and dissemination of ideas, exerting influence upon and providing critique

5. 4. At universities, transformation revolves around 4 main issues • Curriculum, quality and standards • Differentiation of higher education landscapes (different providers) • The student body (identity and experience) • Academic response to changes

6. 5. Curriculum, quality and standards • Meeting new external standards • Quality assessment and accreditation • Responses to local drivers [Council on Higher Education: Higher Education Quality Committee • First Cycle of Audits, March 2003 • Criteria for Accreditation of Programmes offered through DE, February 2004

7. 6. Policy imperatives • Programme development and review • Student assessment and success • Assessment issues for Distance Education • Critical issues for distance include: • Sufficient formative assessment • Individualized feedback on assessment • Assessment management • Security of assessment

8. 8. Student Assessment policies and procedures • Internal assessment • Internal and external moderation • Monitoring student progress • Validity and reliability of assessment • Recording of results • Security • Recognition of prior learning • Assessment practice takes full cognizance of distance education as the mode of delivery

9. NADEOSA 13 Criteria areas • 6. Assessment • Assessment design • Quality assurance of assessment • Assessment management • Security

10. 7. The future of assessments • The New Orthodox of Educational Change/Transformation • Aligned assessments-to monitor that standards are being met • Teaching in a the Knowledge Society: Learning as deep cognitive • See the attachments

11. Conclusion • All these are issues on policy implementation. • How do we see policy? • See it as a practice of power and try to interrogate the meaning of policy in practice

12. Vagaries of Change • They tell us to go and be busy over there, so we all swarm over there and get busy. Then they change their minds and say, “No, over there!” So we all swarm over there and get busy again in a different way. And then it’s ‘over here’, then over somewhere else. And we all keep on swarming as they point fingers in new directions. Every few years, they come to watch you to see if you’re swarming properly. (Marion Dadds, 2001)