The National Forum, in partnership with Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), has been running a series of events scheduled throughout 2020 entitled ‘Work-based Assessment: Exploring Critical Issues and Sharing Solutions’. We are delighted to announce that the event series will now culminate in an online national symposium, due to take place on 19 November at 10am-3pm.
To date, two webinars have taken place in the series, attracting over 500 registrations in all, with each webinar involving representatives from across further and higher education. In addition to inputs from the National Forum, QQI, and the event series facilitator, Dr Geraldine O’Neill, the webinars involved valuable contributions from representatives of Trinity College Dublin, City of Dublin Education and Training Board, Accounting Technicians Ireland, University of Limerick, and Mayo, Sligo Leitrim Education and Training Board.
The first webinar, which took place in June, allowed participants to explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding work-based assessment, and identify key critical issues with which staff and students grapple, such as consistency, reliability and authenticity in work-based assessment. The focus of the second webinar was on the particular challenges involved in striving for consistency in work-based assessment, given the variety of work-based assessment methods, roles and contexts.
November’s national symposium, entitled ‘Work-Based Assessment: Getting to Grips with Policies and Practices’ will build on learning from conversations that have taken place during and around the preceding webinars and provide an opportunity to consider actions for sectoral change. The symposium will draw together international and national experts, key resources, case studies and use a series of interactive approaches to interrogate this topic across the range of different work-based learning contexts.
In addition to representatives of students, institutions, professional bodies, and industry, the following keynote speakers will contribute to the symposium:
- Dr Norah McRae of the University of Waterloo, Canada, will focus on ‘The Global Work-Integrated Learning Framework: Understanding the context for assessment discussions’
- Dr Rola Ajjawi of Deakin University, Australia, will focus on ‘The Challenges of Authentic and Aligned Assessment in Complex Work Contexts: Ways forward for policy and practice’
- Dr Mary Kelly of Hibernia College will focus on ‘Work based assessment of competence to practice: A holistic look at assessment of occupational competence in the teaching profession’
For more information on the event series and registration for the upcoming national symposium, see here.
