Just because good assessment needs academic magic does not mean it should be immune from science. How systems thinking and coding can conquer the marking mountain.

In twenty years “pieces of assessment” in Australian higher education has risen from around seven to nearly 30 million, Hamish Coates estimates. This now comes at an annual recurrent cost of $400m and when back-end outlays are added, “it is easy to see how largely unreformed assessment practises might be costing close to a billion dollars annually.”

It can’t go on but it will, in fact it will get worse, unless there are changes to the way student work is examined and assessed. Professor Coates, ex UniMelbourne, now Tsinghau University, warns in a new paper for Online Education Services, a partnership of SEEK and Swinburne U, to be released today.      

But because things must change does not mean they will quickly or easily. Professor Coates outlines at length challenges and processes involved and he sets out stages to update assessment, regardless of models used.

Mustering courage for a “leap into uncertainty”

Investing in platforms “that promise technical and financial returns”

Leading against, “the distrust, subversion and denial that blocks change”

“The rest is easy,” coding, upskilling education engineers evaluating performance and integrity, for example.

And when it happens everybody will win.  “Assessment is a fulcrum for enhancing student engagement and retention. … By doing assessment better and cheaper there is enormous educational and financial value to be found for institutions, faculty, students and government. Producing more cogent data on outcomes would yield broader dividends by proving economic and social returns from education,” Professor Coates says.