Week 1: What is innovative assessment and why is it useful?

Introduction

Innovative approaches to assessment can help learners to demonstrate skills for society, employment and education. Mobile technology means that many learners now have direct access to handheld computing. As a result, different types of assessment can now be produced and applied.

This week you will begin by examining the purpose and benefits of innovative assessment in modern education. You will review a competency-based approach to education and compare this with traditional or constructive alignment-based approaches to education. You’ll move on to investigate what skills are needed by learners in today’s society and how innovative approaches to assessment might help educators to help learners demonstrate these skills. You’ll also look at how innovative assessments can be used to more closely reflect what is taught and how learning can be more closely aligned to the skills required for employment and access to higher education.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• describe the purpose and benefits of innovative assessment
• compare competency-based and constructive alignment-based approaches to assessment
• describe how innovative assessment can help learners demonstrate skills for society
• discuss how innovative assessment can enable learning to reflect better education and employment skills.