In this article we explore how examiners assess a thesis that includes published work. An online survey was used to gather data on approaches to assessing publication-based theses (PBTs). The respondents were 62 supervisors who had experience examining PBTs across a range of disciplines at a research-intensive university in New Zealand. Nearly…

Formative assessment has recently become a preferred assessment strategy in educational institutions worldwide. However, it is not easy to implement in Asian classrooms, because local cultures and institutional constraints potentially hinder the practice. This one-semester study aimed to use the "third space", as the core of the third…

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) only becomes an effective tool for improving teaching and learning when the relevant stakeholders seriously consider and plan appropriate actions according to student feedback. It is common practice in medical education to provide clinical teachers with student feedback. However, there is limited evidence about…

In this paper, we examine workplace educators' interpretations of their assessment practices. We draw on a critical practice lens to conceptualise assessment practice as a social, relational and situated practice that becomes critical through critique and emancipation. We conducted semi-structured interviews followed by roundtable discussions…

Driven by issues of accountability, the assessment movement in higher education has gained significant momentum in recent years. However, successful implementation of assessment processes varies radically across institutions. A key issue is faculty engagement. This qualitative inquiry explored factors that impact faculty participation in a…

Research on the marking process has focused mainly on judgement and strategy use. Previous studies have depicted the marking process as a monolithic sequence of marking single scripts, and primarily in examination marking contexts. The present study investigated the marking process encompassing aspects relatively neglected in previous research:…

Achieving change in assessment practices in higher education is difficult. One of the reasons for this is resistance among those responsible for teaching and assessing. This paper seeks to explore this resistance through an analysis of staff dialogue during a major attempt to change the assessment practices at one institution. An institution-wide…

Many higher educational institutions and academic staff are still sceptical about the validity and reliability of student evaluation questionnaires, in particular when these evaluations are completed online. One month after a university-wide implementation from paper to online evaluation across 629 modules, (perceived) resistance and ambivalence…

Formative assessment is increasingly being implemented through policy initiatives in Chinese educational contexts. As an approach to assessment, formative assessment derives many of its key principles from Western contexts, notably through the work of scholars in the UK, the USA and Australia. The question for this paper is the ways that formative…

Internationally, centralised systems of student evaluation have become normative practice in higher education institutions, providing data for monitoring teaching quality and for teacher professional development. While extensive research has been done on student evaluations, there is less research-based evidence about teachers' perceptions of…

Teachers are often assumed to have a negative attitude towards quality endeavours of their institutions and to hold defensive organisational values. However, there is little empirical research on this issue. This study focuses on teachers' conceptions of quality, on their preferred organisational values and on the relationships between the two. A…

Summative student evaluation of teaching (SET) is a contentious process, but given the increasing emphasis on quality and accountability, as well as national and international calls for centralised student feedback systems, is likely to become an inevitable aspect of teaching. This research aimed to clarify academics' attitudes to SET in a large…

The Freshman Myth has been used to demonstrate that students frequently enter tertiary education with unrealistically high expectations of various aspects of university life. This research explored the Freshman Myth in relation to assessment and predicted it would be reversed for academic issues, with students' having lower and more negative…

The present paper engages in a qualitative research of self-assessment of two lecturers and their students within the framework of a mathematics teaching seminar course (a course during which students submit a research final work) at a teachers' training college in Israel. Two lecturers co-teach in the course - one of them in the discipline of…

Programme evaluation is essential for quality assurance in education. In this paper, we describe our evaluation strategy for the first year of a new medical programme. Although we used multiple methods in the evaluation, the use of the focus group method was core. This paper reports our experiences of focus groups for this purpose. We describe the…