Assess21C

The practice and development of 21st Century Skills (Problem Solving, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, etc.) are playing an increasingly important role in higher and further education (HE & FE) as educators seek to prepare their students to meet the evolving needs of a changing workplace. In response to the changing needs of both students and employers, education providers are placing more and more emphasis on the development of transversal skills in addition to the hard skills/knowledge. In many cases they have developed or adapted their own 21st Century Skills frameworks, often referred to as ‘graduate attributes’, and sought to embed the practice and development of these skills into all aspects of teaching and learning with their institutions.

At the same time, and very much in response to this evolving emphasis on 21st Century Skills, there has been a renewed focus on project-based learning approaches. The potential for a more holistic learning experience afforded by such approaches is seen as  beneficial to the learning outcomes of students since they provide them with a wider range of opportunities to practice and develop 21st Century Skills in the context of the more subject matter specific knowledge and skills.

Challenge

As education providers develop their approaches to supporting their students’ practice and development of 21st Century Skills they often face the same common challenge when it comes to the assessment of these skills. As greater emphasis is placed on these skills as part of course curricula, it becomes more important that 21st Century Skills are viewed in a more formalised way. Rather than just incorporating these skills into the learning outcomes, instructional designs and lesson plans and leaving it at that, it is necessary to be able to quantify student’s development of these skills over time, often referred to as the ‘distance travelled’’. The nature of 21st Century Skills and the often implicit approach to embedding them in both formal and more non-formal education contexts raises interesting questions about how to assess something that is not formally taught. 21st Century Skills assessment is an inherently challenging task that has been the subject of much research across many application domains including schools, HE/FE and corporate learning and much can be learned through the cross pollination of ideas from these differing domains.

In the context of project based learning in HE/FE, one of the challenges in assessing these skills is the need to support and scaffold lecturers and tutors as they assess their students 21st Century Skills. Lecturers and tutors are well practiced in the assessment of subject specific knowledge and skills, of which they are themselves subject matter experts. However, they may not be as comfortable when it comes to 21st Century Skills and need an appropriate level of support. One of the recurring themes when it comes to supporting the assessment of 21st Century Skills is ‘what does good look like’ and how can assessors be supported in effectively and  efficiently recognising these attributes . At the same time lecturers and tutors are already time poor and so any assessment methodology for 21st Century Skills needs to take this into account and make the process as efficient and streamlined as possible.

Another related challenge when it comes to the assessment of 21st Century Skills in HE/FE comes from the nature of 21st Century Skills themselves. Whereas a student might cover a specific subject area or topic as part of a single class or module with perhaps only one lecturer, 21st Century Skills are practiced and developed across all of the student’s classes and modules. To develop a complete picture of a student’s skills we need to consider their performance across all of their classes, involving many different lecturers and tutors. The beauty of this is that it allows for a more holistic assessment, but it does require an assessment approach that is designed to address assessment of this skill. For example addressing both intra and inter-rater reliability as it seems to create a complete picture of a students skills.

A final consideration might also be the need to provide more continuous feedback for students, lecturers/tutors and the education provider on the practice and development of these skills. As the focus with 21st Century Skills is often on the ‘distance travelled’ rather than just a final summative assessment it could be invaluable to all stakeholders to have insight into these skills over the course of an academic year or indeed an entire degree program.

Progress to date

Since October 2021 our working group has been developing our insights around the problems in this area, co-ideating on what a potential solution might look like and testing our ideas with stakeholders along the way.

Our work to date has culminated in the design of a conversational prototype of a system to foster and assess 21^st Century skills for higher and further education students across their time with an institution in a light touch peer/tutor assessment platform leveraging Behavioural Anchor Rating Statements (BARS) and fostering each student’s development with a complementary supportive self-assessment app . The response to this prototype has been both supportive and informative in highlighting areas for further development but overall provides validation of the need for this solution. We currently have interest from members of the working group to progress this concept to a software demonstrator to trial. If you would like to learn more about this project please get in touch with any of the team here at Learnovate.