ABSTRACT
There has been a proliferation of books about assessment in higher education containing case-study accounts of innovations or simply lists of ideas offered as if they were best practice. This proliferation reflects rapidly changing practice and this change is being brought about not only by the enthusiasm of expert teachers, but by a raft of changes in the context within which assessment operates. This chapter explores some of these contextual changes and the problems they bring, in order to provide a background in which innovations and their impacts are described. While some of the context described here may be specific to the UK, the phenomena are similar in higher education in many other countries.
