Improving the Assessment of Transferable Skills in Chemistry Through Evaluation of Current Practice

The development and assessment of transferable skills acquired by students, such as communication and teamwork skills, within undergraduate degrees is being increasingly emphasised. Many instructors have designed and implemented assessment tasks with the aim to provide students with opportunities to acquire and demonstrate these skills. We have now applied our previously published tool to evaluate whether assessment tasks allow students to demonstrate achievement of these transferable skills. The tool allows detailed evaluation of the alignment of any assessment item against the claimed set of learning outcomes. We present here two examples in which use of the tool provides evidence for the level of achievement of transferable skills and a third example of use of the tool to inform curriculum design and pedagogy, with the goal of increasing achievement of communication and teamwork bench marks. Implications for practice in assessment design for learning are presented.