Skip to content
Skip to navigation menu

PER Seminar

Assessment: The silent killer of learning

Speaker: Prof Eric Mazur (Harvard University)
Date: Wednesday 27 January 2021
Time: 16:00
Venue: Zoom

Why is it that stellar students sometimes fail in the workplace while dropouts succeed? One reason is that most, if not all, of our current assessment practices are inauthentic. Just as the lecture focuses on the delivery of information to students, so does assessment often focus on having students regurgitate that same information back to the instructor. Consequently, assessment fails to focus on the skills that are relevant in life in the 21st century. Assessment has been called the 'hidden curriculum' as it is an important driver of students' study habits. Unless we rethink our approach to assessment, it will be very difficult to produce a meaningful change in education.