Abstract
Current pressures in higher education around student employability are driving new initiatives for change. Assessment is also a topic of debate, as it is a key driver of student behaviour, yet often falls behind other metrics in national surveys. In addition, increasing focus on digital literacies is catalysing new appreciations of what emerging digital culture might mean for both students and staff. These three highly topical challenges were jointly explored by the University of Exeter’s Collaborate project, which aimed to create employability-focused assessments enhanced by technology. By combining existing research on assessment with grounded data derived from local stakeholders, the project has developed a model for assessment design which embeds employability directly into the curriculum. Digital technologies have been aligned with this model using a “top trump” metaphor, where key affordances of technologies are highlighted in the context of the model. This paper explores the design-based research approach taken to develop this model and associated “top trumps”, along with results from the first practical iteration. Results suggest that the model is effective in supporting the design of an “authentic” assessment and that a targeted affordances approach can support the alignment of specific technologies with a particular pedagogic design.Keywords: employability; assessment; authentic; affordance; evaluation(Published: 6 September 2013)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2013, 21: 21986 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.21986
Highlights
This paper documents the preliminary findings from the University of Exeter’s Collaborate project, which aims to bring together staff, students and employers to create employability-focused assessments enhanced by technology
A Design-Based Research (DBR) methodology was adopted to explore how assessments might be adapted to include features associated with authentic assessments, supported by contemporary technologies
In particular we have focused on affordances as functional, and not as ‘‘action possibilities’’, a term which seems synonymous with affordances
Summary
Employability: a driver for change Student employability is currently something of a hot topic in Higher Education, and perhaps for good reason given the importance placed on employability by those thinking of attending university. Recent surveys have highlighted it as among the foremost reasons for considering a university education (Pollard et al 2008), while over 70% of students stated that improving job opportunities was the most important reason to go to university (CBI/NUS 2011). One possible way for universities to help improve student employability is to ‘‘close the gap’’ between higher education (ALT), a UK-based professional and scholarly society and membership organisation.
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