Leading departments on the pathway to effective assessment practice - a case study of collegial approach

It is well known that most of learning in educational institutions is assessment driven. The Department of Health & Chiropractic is faced with assessment issues different to a majority of other Departments within the university. We have taken the opportunity offered by the Leadership and assessment; Strengthening the Nexus Project to initiate a bottom-up approach to assessment across various subjects within this Department. Participatory Action Research (PAR) offers an excellent avenue for a collegial approach to this issue. The objectives of this sub-project are to: i)Increase awareness of scholarship in teaching and learning with particular reference to assessment amongst the academics of the Department; ii) Initiate and facilitate the practice of reflective assessment, and iii) Develop ‘best practice’ assessment strategies within the department of health & chiropractic. The features that are distinctive to this department are the need to facilitate learning in the psychomotor as well as cognitive domains. Assessing psychomotor skills generally requires a criterion-referenced approach. However, the Department is placed within the paradigm of a norm-referenced University system. This creates a number of challenges. These challenges and the implications of these to the teaching and learning practice within the Department will be discussed. The collegial nature of the PAR methodology will result in the creation of leaders within the Department who will spearhead the changes at the Department level that will then ideally effect changes at both the Divisional and University levels.