Where to from here? Reflections, rethinking and reimagining higher education assessment in the New Media Age

The New Media Age has ushered in new opportunities, challenges and demands in the delivery of higher education. Access to information and people anywhere/anytime is transforming traditional education models and changing teaching and learning approaches. In this paper, we reflect on current assessment practices in higher education and consider the impact the New Media Age is likely to have on the future of assessment. Examining education technology trends, we present a model that predicts the expansion of assessment along two dimensions: an involvement continuum and an accessibility continuum. The former consists of a scale intrapersonal to interpersonal while the latter consists of a scale fixed to flexible. Higher education assessment has traditionally provided for a relatively fixed spatiotemporal accessibility and intrapersonal involvement context. In this paper we suggest that the new media phenomenon will extend assessment provision further into flexible spatial and temporal accessibility, and deeper into interpersonal involvement.