Micro-Credential in Assessment and Feedback

Overview

This micro-credential is designed to facilitate lecturers in enhancing assessment practices in higher education, and enable them to design a diverse range of assessments that measure achievement, guide improvement, and support students to grow as learners.

The micro-credential explores evidence-based assessment strategies and the educational theories and pedagogical approaches that inform them, with a specific focus on constructive alignment between learning outcomes, teaching methods, and assessment.

Participants will develop skills to enable them to reflect upon their current assessment and feedback practice, and develop a critical understanding of how to plan, design, evaluate and assessment strategies suitable for higher education contexts.

Participants in this this module will engage with the literature and international best practice while also engaging with their students and colleagues to develop their assessment practice. They will complete a project culminating in a rigorously developed action plan to enhance their assessment practice.

Details

10 ECTS credits; 24 hours of class time plus peer engagement and independent learning; typically delivered mostly online with some in-person sessions.

Upon successful completion of Assessment and Feedback, participants may choose to progress to the "Assessment and Feedback in Practice" micro-credential (5 ECTS credits, see bottom of this page for details) through which the action plan developed in the Assessment and Feedback micro-credential will be implemented, evaluated and disseminated.

Entry Requirements

Participants must be working in an academic role in TU Dublin where they are teaching for at least four hours per week, or where they are in a management role with direct influence on the assessment practices of lecturers. Participants must have an NFQ Level 8 (or higher) qualification or complete a Recognition of Prior Learning process to demonstrate their capacity to participate in this microcredential.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this module the participant will be able to:

Articulate an informed position on effective and inclusive assessment design that supports student learning.
Critically evaluate assessment and feedback practices considering how they measure achievement, guide improvement, and support students to grow as learners.
Design and evaluate evidence-informed assessment strategies to address specific pedagogical and contextual challenges.
Apply the principles of programme-level integration, constructive alignment, authenticity, academic integrity and inclusivity in assessment design.
Critically evaluate the risks and opportunities posed by Generative Artificial Intelligence to the integrity and authenticity of assessment practices.

Assessment

Participants will engage in a three-part project on assessment in higher education.

First, they will reflect on their personal philosophy and current practice on assessment and feedback, and gather evidence to inform the design of a module-level assessment strategy — using Brookfield’s Four Lenses to inform their approach.

This will be followed by the production of the assessment strategy itself, and finally, the articulation of an action plan for its implementation, including key prerequisites, resources, timelines, and feedback mechanisms.

Critical and scholarly reflection will be a key feature of the process.

Indicative Syllabus

Assessment Basics

Purpose of Assessment; Seminal theories and models of assessment; Formative, summative and diagnostic assessment methods; Assessment of, for and as learning, Assessment Methods and Tools; Authentic and alternative assessments.

Principles of Effective Assessment Design

Learning outcomes and cognitive domain levels; Intro to constructive alignment; Assessment criteria and rubrics; Inclusive and equitable assessment design; Coherent and integrated assessment at programme level; The assessment lifecycle.

Feedback for Learning: Principles, Practices, and Emerging Technologies

Designing effective feedback for learning: Key types, purposes, and practices; Feedback literacy and fostering engagement with feedback; balancing instructor, peer, and automated feedback; authentic feedback practices; Technology-Enhanced Feedback: Affordances, Risks, and Ethical Considerations in AI-Driven Contexts; Aligning feedback loops with curriculum to support learner progress.

Generative Artificial Intelligence resilient assessment and Academic Integrity

Characteristics of Gen-AI resilient assessments: key theories and practices; Integrating Gen-AI into assessment and feedback design and implementation; Supporting learners to use Gen-AI for learning and assessment and the ‘AI Assessment scale’; Ethics, Academic Integrity, and Learner Guidance in the Age of Gen-AI.

Assessment Innovation: From Design to Implementation

Implementing innovative assessments: practical constraints and enablers and the Assessment Design Decision Making Framework; Strategies for initiating, supporting, and leading assessment change within institutional and departmental contexts; Navigating institutional policies and QA/QE; Planning for and evaluating the impact of innovative assessments on learning and the student experience.

Progressing to Assessment and Feedback in Practice

The Assessment and Feedback in Practice micro-credential follows from the Assessment and Feedback micro-credential. It cannot be taken prior to the successful completion of the Assessment and Feedback, however, it does not need to be taken immediately following the completion of that micro-credential.

In the Assessment and Feedback in Practice micro-credential, participants will implement a focused, evidence-informed change in their assessment and feedback practices, critically evaluate its impact and disseminate insights to colleagues.

Acting on the plan developed during the pre-requisite Assessment and Feedback microcredential, participants will design an evaluation strategy to assess the impact of their actions, they will then implement the innovation within their action plan and gather insights, feedback, data etc. in tandem.

They will disseminate their findings to a group of five or more colleagues with the intention to influence the enhancement of assessment and feedback practices more broadly in their professional environment.

Details: 5 ECTS credits; runs over one semester. Can be taken in any semester, once Assessment and Feedback has been successfully completed.