Reforming Assessment to Promote Learning: Critical Issues from a Global Perspective

The past decade has seen important progress in specifying how assessment of learning can be designed and implemented to support the process of learning, with individual scholars and colloquia producing comprehensive, well-grounded guidelines for reforming assessment in higher education systems. At the same time, numerous national initiatives have addressed demands to assure the quality of graduates by focusing on the specification of program-level learning outcome standards that apply to all graduates in a discipline, regardless of their place of study. The OECD’s Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) project is a logical international extension of these initiatives. However, assuring the quality of graduate learning outcomes through appropriate assessment regimes presents a major challenge to most higher education systems. Much work remains to be done in developing appropriate approaches to assessment and implementing these approaches in complex educational systems where effecting changes to established practices is extremely challenging.