[CLOSED] Form@re Call n. 1/2020 – Learning assessment in higher education

Learning assessment is strategic for renewing processes at University level. Documenting and evaluating learning outcomes and processes allow not only to understand what students know and what they can do by practising what they have learnt. They also allow to learn about factors that enable or could hinder the learning process itself. Learning assessment is a "public issue", a guarantee of transparency and reliability, it is a necessary condition as for the expectations of a wide range of actors: students and their families, teachers and policy makers. Assessment is necessary to certify and to validate learning, to provide evidences for policy development, to improve accountability and to promote better governance among a wide range of stakeholders (families, communities, teachers, ministries, employers, civil society groups). From the pedagogical point of view it is an indispensable tool to inform teaching and learning practices. As evaluation involves complex objects, such as the cognitive processes in higher education, it cannot be built only as a pathway aimed at verifying and validating pre-established hypotheses, like for instance the objectives of the study programme. Indeed evaluation must necessarily be articulated in a way that it interacts with complex problems that characterise learning processes in different fields and learning steps. Thus learning assessment is never end in itself, it substantially contributes to give meaning and to regulate learning processes, for action and improvement.