Welcome and overview

Watch and listen

This video re-introduces Enterprise Professor Sandra Milligan, the Executive Director of Melbourne Assessment at the University of Melbourne, you met Sandra in the Taster – Measuring What Matters: Transforming Assessment and Recognition of Complex Learning Competencies.

A warm welcome back. As a current or emerging leader, this course supports you to consolidate your knowledge and helps position you to lead embedding the assessment and recognition of complex learning competencies.

Educators need support as they move to incorporate the use of transparent, trusted, comparable, moderated, developmental, performance-based assessments of students’ levels of attainment in learning complex competencies into their assessment and recognition practices.

_{Paraphrased from  Milligan, S. K., Luo, R., Hassim, E., & Johnston, J. (2020, September 7). Future-proofing students: What they need to know and how to assess and credential them (p. 5). Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne. https://education.unimelb.edu.au/mgse-industry-reports/report-2-future-proofing-students}

The Taster provided you with an opportunity to understand the assessment and recognition of complex competencies. This course looks at the practical application of the ideas presented but it has also been designed to equip you with the knowledge, processes, and tools to lead this complex work in your organisation.

This week, you will have the opportunity to revisit the ideas introduced in the Taster – Measuring What Matters: Transforming Assessment and Recognition of Complex Learning Competencies. You will explore educational policy agendas to help you identify the learning ambitions within your context. You will be invited to think about the complex competencies that will equip your learners to meet your identified learning ambitions. You will also need to consider who (teachers/students/leaders) is within your sphere of influence and how they can assist you to lead the design and implementation of new generation assessment within your learning context.

View the video where Sandra welcomes participants and positions the purpose and leadership focus of this course. Sandra sets the scene, recaps, and outlines the scope of this seven-week course, highlighting areas of focus and how the course has been designed to assist you in growing your understanding to lead the assessment design for complex competencies. The course content is informed by both academic experts and practitioners who are forward thinkers – ‘first movers’ – both in Australia and internationally working to reimagine and influence schooling and other education organisations. These first movers are moving away from the grammar of schooling that continues to lock us into many of the distinctive features of the 20th-century version of education, and they have been testing and refining the processes you will have an opportunity to apply in your school/organisation contexts.

We hope that this course will provide both challenge and affirmation in relation to why, what, and how to lead transforming assessment and recognition practices. You will have opportunities to connect with others participating in the course, to reflect and self-assess to build your knowledge and know-how to lead. As an educator, you can support colleagues to impact young people’s learning through designing learning, assessment, and recognition of the competencies that are vital for life and work.

As you move through the modules, imagine you are viewing a split screen – one screen where you continue to consolidate your knowledge, understanding, and practical application of assessing and recognising complex learning competencies and a second screen where you consider how to actually lead this work with your colleagues. The course is about building personal competence and confidence in the why, what, and how of assessment and recognition alongside strengthening your leadership competence.

You will see this symbol throughout the course to prompt you to think about how you can apply the concepts as a leader in your current or future settings.