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Research experiences are prominent in universities' undergraduate programmes across Australasia and are known to produce a variety of positive outcomes for students, educators, and universities. While there is growing research focused independently on undergraduate research and the role of assessment in higher education, how undergraduate research is assessed is not well understood. This paper reports on a scoping study and illuminates current assessment strategies and best practices in undergraduate research at universities in Australia and New Zealand across 17 disciplines. It offers empirical evidence and reflections based on a mixed-methods study involving 54 survey responses and 4 interviews with academics who engage in best practice. We explore what gets assessed and how, the main purpose of assessment, what drives undergraduate research assessment, and what criteria are used. Contributions and implications for undergraduate research assessment practice are discussed and key principles for design proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment is a key element in any course, and providing students with a balance between formative and summative assessments is crucial. Defining such a process is a complex task for teachers and often entails a great workload. This makes it necessary to have tools to help in the assessment process definition and its monitoring. This paper first analyses the possibility of using the available tools in Moodle. For that, we carried out a bibliographical study, conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 teachers, and analysed the use of the Moodle gradebook in their courses. We found that teachers find it quite difficult to use the Moodle gradebook, so they rarely take advantage of all its possibilities. Taking this into account, we present Forge, a system that facilitates the definition of assessment processes following the e2Forja methodology in such a way that the produced process can be exported to Moodle. We have analysed whether Forge makes the assessment definition process easier or not. We have selected four courses to carry out a case study using Forge and interviewed the teachers again. We detected that Forge facilitates the assessment process definition and its monitoring, taking advantage of the characteristics of the Moodle gradebook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summative assessment is often considered a motivator that drives students' learning. Higher education has a responsibility in promoting lifelong learning and assessment plays an important role in supporting students' capability to make evaluative judgements about their work and that of others. However, as research often focuses on formal pedagogical design, it is unclear what behaviours summative assessment prompts, thus the relationship between summative assessment, learning and evaluative judgement requires further investigation. Drawing on a small-scale ethnography-informed study, this paper adopts a practice theory approach to explore how undergraduate physics students from three year levels make evaluative judgements in the context of summative assessment tasks. The contexts explored through observations and interviews include a graded in-class tutorial, an out-of-class study group for an in-semester assignment, and individual preparation for examinations. The findings suggest that while summative assessment is a crucial aspect of students' learning context, it does not fully shape students' practices. Instead, students engage in incidental conversations about the quality of their work and how to do things in their studies. By focusing on what students actually do, this study integrates formal and informal aspects of students' learning, highlighting the tensions between undergraduate practices and intended learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data collected from multiple sources, this qualitative case study investigates how seven English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) academics from a university in mainland China perceive and cope with their professional vulnerability within the system of performativity. Three themes were generated from the data: (1) professional vulnerability as a state of conformity and self-learning, (2) professional vulnerability as a state of constrained agency, and (3) professional vulnerability as a state of disengagement. The findings not only reflect the complex and dynamic nature of EFL academics' professional vulnerability, but also unpack numerous contextual and personal factors mediating EFL academics' experiences of professional vulnerability. The paper ends with some practical implications on how to mitigate the negative influences that vulnerability has on EFL academics' professional practice within the system of performativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]