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Ottawa 2024
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PC29 | Planning to mitigate the unintended and undesired consequences of programmatic assessment

Pre Conference Workshop

Pre-Conference Workshop

1:30 pm

25 February 2024

M216

Session Program

Workshop Facilitators: Prof Anna Ryan, Dr Mike Tweed, A/Prof Glendon Tait and A/Prof Suzanne Schut

A programmatic system of assessment is focused on longitudinal delivery of authentic assessment events involving different assessment formats where data is accumulated against a meaningful framework. Designed to address some of the problems associated with traditional assessment systems, programmatic assessment aims to increase student engagement, reduce failure to fail, and provide rich feedback to support learner growth and development, while also allowing robust progress decisions. In most contexts where traditional assessment approaches are in place, a shift to programmatic assessment involves significant change. While the outcomes of such change should have expected and intended consequences, such change can also lead to unintended and undesired consequences such as increased assessment workload, increased student anxiety, unlimited opportunities to meet standards, devaluing of individual assessments (or topic areas) and unwieldly complexity of feedback and decision-making data.