We kicked off the week with a lively debate around the purpose and value of wordcounts. Delegates deliberated whether wordcount is truly needed or whether they are a distraction from developing other academic and professional skills. There was a range of views with some highlighting, ‘many students are reassured by having a word limit as a guide to work towards. Would it be more stressful for students if we abolished them?’ When we asked members ‘Should wordcounts be abolished?’ the response was a 50:50 split... glad we settled that one then!

Day 2 saw us celebrating our assessment-focused Collaborative Enhancement Projects (CEPs), showcasing projects and resources about inclusive assessment practice, academic integrity, and using assessment to enhance student capability.

Three project leads delivered presentations with more information about their projects.

On Wednesday we launched our Competence-Based Education Primer. You can also watch this session on YouTube.

On our penultimate day we heard from the University of the West of England about their approach to uncapped resits. This discussion sparked lots of fantastic debate on the role of assessment design for resits, artificial intelligence and authentic assessment, plus noting the additional workload uncapping resits may bring for academics.

Our final day of the festival closed with relaxed, yet probing, theoretical musings about how a posthumansist lens can help liberate assessments so they are fit for the future, bringing a focus to how theory can positively enhance practice.

We may not have offered scrumptious pastries, but our members did receive lots of food for thought and went away with valuable insights and practical tips for their own institutional assessment practice.