Project lead: Dr Diana J Pritchard
This Collaborative Enhancement Project sets out to identify the impacts of different models of authentic assessments not only on learners, but also on staff and institutions. This comprehensive assessment will provide a holistic assessment of the costs and benefits of resourcing the implementation of different models of authentic assessments to the institution.
Project lead: University of Bedfordshire
About this project
Authentic assessments have been an increasing feature of higher education provision, with benefits broadly recognised in terms of enhanced learning outcomes and competencies including higher-order thinking, applied and complex problem-solving.
Evidence also suggests that they enhance students’ employability and offer a more engaging experience as their design typically incorporates elements relevant to the world of work as defined by each discipline. Their pertinence is all the greater for concerns about academic integrity, in the context of the opportunities and challenges posed by AI, and in light of the resource intensiveness of some models along the spectrum of authenticity.
Yet systematic evidence-based research remains limited on the impact of different assessment models on learners and the cost and benefit balance of their implementation for staff and the institution in terms of managing, resourcing and delivering them.
This Collaborative Enhancement Project aims:
- To provide evidence of the impacts of authentic assessments on student grades and experiences compared to traditional assessments and of different types of authentic assessments.
- To contribute to informed decision-making about the most successful and resource-efficient assessments as a basis for course enhancement planning and upscaling.
- To identify effective approaches to communicate, support and prepare students to understand, and engage effectively with, more authentic types of assessment.
This project brings together three institutions who are at different stages of the journey towards embedding different models of authentic assessments in UG and PGT provision in academic programmes, with different practices, experiences and policies.
Our cross-institutional team will draw on their expertise in developing, implementing and researching authentic assessments, and in the evaluation of educational practices, and provide access to data from different departments. By employing student research consultants, student perspectives and voices will be amplified.
The project complements previous CEP assessment projects by offering a focus on authentic assessments and developing a methodology that can be applied to evaluate the impact of future types of assessment transformation.
Lead institution:
Dr Diana J Pritchard, University of Bedfordshire (PI)
Dr Alexander K. Kofinas, University of Bedfordshire (Co-PI)
Dr Sibel Kaya, University of Bedfordshire
Dr Kathryn Sidaway, University of Bedfordshire
Partner institutions:
Dr Nicholas Worsfold, Brunel University of London (Co-PI)
Dr Stephanie Baines, Brunel University of London
Professor David Tree, Brunel University of London
Dr Pauldy Otermans, Brunel University of London
Dr Crystal Tsay, University of Greenwich (Co-PI)
Project lead: Dr Diana J Pritchard
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Dr Diana J Pritchard, Head of Educational Development and Evaluation (in the Academy of Learning and Teaching Excellence) at the University of Bedfordshire, is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds a national Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence. She has over three decades of higher education and interdisciplinary practitioner, scholarship and evaluation experience in distinct national and international contexts.