ABSTRACT
In his ‘Prosepoem towards a definition of itself’ Brian Patten (1967) suggested that poetry ‘should guide all those who are safe into the middle of busy roads and leave them there’. This seems to me a good analogy for the kinds of critiques of traditional assessments that are contained in this volume. To all those who are comfortable with the existing state of affairs regarding assessment in higher education, the chapters in this book will have been unsettling. They may well, and indeed, should, feel that they have been guided from their complacency to the middle of a busy road and left there.
