Making assessment prospective, rather than retrospective

Assessing learning has never been a simple task, and in the 21st century is harder than ever before. A key difficulty arises from increasing understanding that knowledge acquired to address the first step in a sequence of capability development is unlikely to be sufficient for learners to be able to enact the combination of skills and awareness indicating mastery of a body of knowledge. Rolloff ’s (2010) constructivist approach to evidence-based teaching in medical education and Miller's (1990) four-stage sequence for guiding learning and assessment provide the basis for this workshop. Their work demonstrates how progress from novice to expert capability begins with i) ‘knowing about’, moves to ii) ’knowing how’ iii) progresses to ’being able to’, before being competently able to iv) ’take action’ [in real time]. The workshop demonstrates a methodology for reframing assessment tasks as learning processes contributing to the development of lifelong learning capabilities.