WIP: Higher Education Assessment Discourses in the Context of Emerging Technologies

This work-in-progress research paper describes an ongoing study of digital assessment discourses in engineering higher education with a focus on teacher roles and agency. Developing assessment practices in higher education is often emphasised as necessary when new technologies emerge. However, enactment of these changes is often delayed. This study employs discourse analysis to investigate digital assessment discourses at a Swedish higher education institution. The discourse analysis provides insight into which assessment practices are enabled and which agencies and roles the teacher can be assigned. A discourse analysis has been made on written policies and instructions intended to clarify and regulate the use of digital resources when assessing student performance. The preliminary analysis reveals three different discourses: the legal assessment discourse, the learning outcome-driven assessment discourse and the transformative assessment discourse. The three different assessment discourses enable different approaches to teachers' work with assessment in a time of emergent digital technologies. The study findings highlight the need to understand digital assessment practice as a social practice enabled or limited by the prevailing discourse. An increased understanding of different assessment discourses gives insights into how assessment activities in the digital context can be enacted. This contributes to increased knowledge of why the adaptation and development of assessment is slow.