ABSTRACT
The subject of assessing student learning is frequently ignored or, at best, marginalised in many studies of learning and teaching in higher education. Worse, assessment is intimately associated in the minds of many academics with the relentless drudgery of marking assignments and examinations of increasingly large classes. More often than not, it is an add-on component in the curriculum design process that starts with decisions about what course content should be selected, and then how the teaching might be organised. For students, assessment is usually associated with a high anxiety test of their capacity to operate under pressure in an examination room. It is often the primary driver of their highly pragmatic and strategic approach to learning, and their understanding of what a programme of study is about.
