The Keele Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence (KIITE) is delighted to announce the programme for the Keele Education Conference 2022.

The theme of the conference, to be held on 14 January 2022 via Microsoft Teams, is ‘Putting Assessment Practices to the Test’.

The pandemic context saw a radical shift in assessment and feedback practices, with sector wide innovation and debate in relation to the legitimacy, rigour and inclusivity of ‘alternative assessment’. As we have emerged, our focus has shifted to preserving the best elements of that revolution, embedding the enhanced ‘alternative’ into the mainstream, and developing an assessment strategy that is more inclusive, fair and more valuable for students.

At Keele, we need sophisticated assessment design to support curriculum delivery for the future, providing students with inspiring and challenging briefs, and allowing students to produce authentic assessment outputs that they can take with them, showcase and be proud of. This year’s conference explores multiple dimensions of assessment and feedback design and management to give educators the ideas and inspiration to shape that future.

Dr Filippo Nereo, Associate Director in the Keele Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence, and co-organiser of the conference commented:

“The standard of proposals we received for the conference was extremely high. There is a fantastic, cross-disciplinary line-up of speakers from across the University, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about the exciting work that is taking place at Keele to enhance assessment practices.”

We are delighted to have two conference keynotes from Professor Naomi Winstone, Professor of Educational Psychology from the University of Surrey, and Professor Tansy Jessop, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education at the University of Bristol.

Following the conference introductions and the first keynote of the day, there will be three parallel presentation sessions in the morning, with the first offering delegates the chance to choose between exploring the themes of Authentic Assessment, Technology-enhanced Assessment or Feedback Literacy.

The second set of parallel presentation session will offer three choices again, with the themes of: Authentic Assessment, Reflective and Inclusive Assessment, or Feedback Literacy.

Following the second keynote of the day, Lawrie Phipps, Honorary Professor within KIITE will chair a panel on Perspectives of Assessment with Dr Tunde Varga-Atkins, Senior Educational Developer from the University of Liverpool joining a panel of representatives from around the university.

The Conference expands on the success of previous Learning and Teaching Conferences, which have been hosted at Keele since 2016, and responds to sector-wide interest on the topic of assessment.

Visit the conference web pages for the full conference programme, and to register to attend the conference.