Assessment and feedback in higher education reimagined: using programmatic assessment to transform higher education

ABSTRACT

We argue that assessment and feedback practices in higher education need to be transformed to better address three purposes: promoting learning, assuring assessment rigour, and communicating students’ employability. To address shortcomings in the current assessment and feedback culture, we propose programmatic assessment (PA), a new approach to assessment developed initially in medical education and now applied to a range of other professional fields. We outline eight recommendations that synthesise the key principles underpinning PA. Then, drawing on experience with PA in various professional fields in the Netherlands, we describe and illustrate four action steps for programme teams to take to implement programmatic assessment. We highlight implications of such a shift for leaders and professional services staff before concluding that PA can transform higher education by creating a more productive culture of assessment and feedback.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment
• programmatic assessment
• feedback
• higher education
• employability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Given our focus on student-centred practice, it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in detail how programmatic assessment may be used to address other specific purposes of assessment, such as institutional accreditation, professional licensing, qualifications frameworks or overall comparability of learning outcomes across institutions and countries. Furthermore, while we emphasise communicating employability as a key purpose of assessment, we recognise that higher education has broader purposes, and that assessment must be aligned to intended educational purposes. Programmatic assessment can be used to address whatever intended learning outcomes a programme values.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liesbeth K. J. Baartman

Liesbeth Baartman works as a professor of assessment in professional / vocational education at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. The main focus of her (practice-based) research is on how assessment systems can capture the complexity of what students need in diverse workplaces. This includes research on programmatic assessment, workplace learning and assessment for learning.

Kathleen M. Quinlan

Kathleen M Quinlan is Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Kent. Her research is broadly in the areas of teaching, learning, assessment and student engagement in higher education.