ABSTRACT
Assessment plays a crucial role in the curriculum and serves many purposes – for individual students, their teachers and the institution as a whole. As a teacher in higher education, your involvement in assessment is one of the most important and demanding aspects of your work. The role of assessor carries with it a high degree of responsibility in terms of ensuring that the academic standards and integrity of the institution are upheld and that all students are treated fairly and equitably. This chapter will provide you with an opportunity to consider your role in assessing students’ work and will examine the basic principles of assessment and the different purposes it has so that you will be able to perform your assessment duties with increased confidence and professionalism. We will focus on the development of an assessment strategy for your course rather than look in detail at the design and marking of individual assessment tasks, as this latter aspect is covered comprehensively in other books in the series. In particular, we will look at the dual role of assessment in promoting and measuring learning and the design of courseassessment strategies that enable both functions to be fulfilled.
