Abstract:
The University of Auckland, like many tertiary educational institutions, has the expectation that graduates leave the institution equipped not only with specialist knowledge, but a set of intellectual skills, capacities and personal attributes (University of Auckland, 2003). Included in this suite of transferable skills, is academic and information literacy (AIL). The study will show how experiences gained from designing an assessment for the postgraduate course provided evidence to develop activities and assessment design for the undergraduate course which followed a year later. By working collaboratively and linking evidence to practice the following outcomes were achieved: • Using a more targeted approach to include AIL principles in assessment design helped to ensure students had greater opportunity to develop necessary AIL skills to meet graduate attributes. Designing assessments that enabled scaffolded learning assisted students to think more critically. • Improvement in the quality of student submitted work. • Findings assisted the project team to apply new skills and enhance assessments and methodologies in other health courses on the programme. • Sharing of course analysis and assessment design workload to ensure deadlines were met.