New paper on measuring future-ready skills by Pearson and Digital Promise

Check out a new paper by Pearson and Digital Promise reflecting the great work of districts implementing instructional and assessment practices to improve future-ready skills. I had the pleasure of joining district leaders with Katie Wilczak, Trent Workman. Megan Golsby, Kelly Mills, Kyle Dunbar, Nicolas Mireles and saw the passion and commitment they have for making sure students are prepared. Improving student critical-thinking, problem solving, creativity, communication, and collaboration isn't just an adult goal for kids. OECD - OCDE recently published a great piece that includes student survey data about the importance students place on these skills as they manage their own learning. Both of these resources are worth a read! https://lnkd.in/g_5P9kWB #assessment #assessmentforlearning #employability #futureready #durableskills

What if student engagement wasn’t only about students — but about us, teachers? In our latest paper, with ivan laurens and Hugues Poissonnier, we revisit the Teacher-as-Servant model through today’s classroom realities. Our findings show how adopting a Resource-Teacher posture - more horizontal, empathic, and human - can spark stronger student motivation and trust, even without changing course content or tech tools. Less directive. More listening. Truly engaging. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/dR3M3wCs #ServantLeadership #StudentEngagement #Pedagogy EDHEC Business School

Seeing the Whole Picture: Quality Assurance Through an Integrated Lens ✨ Inspired by the ABET webinar series “Assessment of Student Learning and Program Continuous Improvement” https://lnkd.in/d8fDvGAr, by Dr. Gloria Rogers, this reflection explores how quality assurance in higher education is best understood through an integrated systems lens. In higher education, an educational program is more than its courses or assessments — it’s an integrated ecosystem where every element connects, interacts, and evolves with the others: 🔹 Inputs: students, faculty, and infrastructure 🔹 Processes: pedagogy, curriculum design, teaching practice, and governance 🔹 Outputs: student performance, employment, research, and innovation 🔹 Outcomes: institutional reputation, community engagement, and long-term societal impact At the heart of this system is value — a thread that runs cross-sectionally through every stage, ensuring that what we invest, design, deliver, and achieve remains meaningful and sustainable. Quality assurance is about understanding these interactions and feedback loops, not merely checking boxes. A review that focuses on only one dimension — such as curriculum content — risks missing how pedagogy connects processes to performance, or how institutional resources shape what learning outcomes are truly achieved. And as John Ruskin once said, “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.” With the paradigm shift shaping education and life today, this rings truer than ever — quality is not an outcome of chance, but of conscious design, purposeful alignment, and transformative values that guide every decision and interaction within the academic ecosystem. #NB_EduQA_Insights

Making that journey into higher education feel less like a leap and more like a welcome. During our latest webinar The Big Trends Shaping Student Decision Making 2025, Kyle Campbell and Jo Richards explored how small shifts in communication can make a big impact on how students experience the start of their journey. Our research highlighted that around 6 in 10 students received early accommodation guidance, and many said it made moving away from home less daunting. But students are also looking for the insights and connections that help them settle, even before they even arrive. Fewer reported receiving information on:  📚 Reading lists - 16%  👋 Buddy systems - 12%  🎓 Connecting with current students - 12% Those who did said it made a real difference. Those who didn’t often wished they had. This isn’t about doing less on accommodation. It’s about balancing the practical with the personal — giving students the information that supports both the logistics of moving and the emotional side of settling in. Watch the full playback and explore the slides to uncover the trends shaping student expectations in 2025 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eyazWgm3

We all say we believe in high expectations. But the truth is, belief starts to erode when the data looks discouraging. I’ve heard it so many times: “I’d have higher expectations if my students scored better.” “If they were reading on grade level.” “If they cared more.” It’s human to feel that way. But waiting for higher scores before we raise expectations puts the system backwards. Belief doesn’t follow results. It creates them. High expectations aren’t about ignoring where students are. They’re about refusing to let that be the ceiling. They live in every choice we make: what texts we use, how we respond to errors, how we talk about our students when they’re not in the room. When educators see early wins like students reading something they never thought they could, writing with more confidence, engaging in rich discussion, that’s when buy-in happens. Not because we told them to believe, but because they saw what belief made possible. #LiteracyLeadership #MTSS #HighExpectations #EducationPolicy #SystemsChange

When I was a child I used to come home and ask, “Shall we go to the park?” My Dads’s reply was always “In a minute.” Because he was marking essays for his GCSE classes. That stack of red-pen work dominated our evenings. He loved teaching. He loved helping students find their voice. But the workload meant less time with his family. That memory stayed with me. Because I realised: if someone I loved was buried under marking, how much more must it weigh on teachers today, especially those working with GCSEs and A-Levels. In England, full-time teachers reported working an average of 52.4 hours per week, well beyond the standard. 48-hour working week. (GOV.UK) And in a 2024 survey, only 22% of teachers and leaders agreed that their workload was acceptable. (GOV.UK) If you’re a teacher of GCSE or A-Level students, you’re not just marking essays - you’re shaping young minds at pivotal moments in their lives. You’re tasked with returning feedback, refining drafts, guiding thought processes, and doing it all while balancing a heavy load. Imagine a world where: • First-draft essays are returned within 24 hours, students revise while their ideas are still fresh. • An AI-driven tool flags recurring issues (for example, weaker thesis structure or under-used evidence in Year 12 modules). • You spend your time teaching the insight, not rewriting the same comment 30 times. • You move from “marking machine” to “writing mentor”. Today, ask yourself: What would you do with an extra hour this evening if you didn’t need to mark papers? Which student conversation could you have if you weren’t stuck grading? How would your classroom change if meaningful feedback arrived while the draft idea was still hot? I’d love to hear from you: what’s the biggest frustration you face when marking essays for GCSE or A-Level students? Comment below let’s talk about how AI-driven feedback might be the partner you never knew you needed and Comment ‘Beta’ to be notified and granted free access to the website before everyone else. #EdTech #AIinEducation #EssayFeedback #GCSE #ALevel #TeacherLife #WritingCoaching #AIessaymarking

Coming towards the end of the first term of my M.Ed journey, it was great to be refreshed and enriched on #StudentCentered teaching method, classroom interactions and motivation as well as #assessment practice, these 3 resources really helped fill in the gaps that I have been seeing among K-12 and HE. #StudentsExplanation is exactly what we were asked to do to playback on our own analysis and evaluation of courses that we have taught, and learning theories that we can apply. #UoPeople does what they preach and teach. The biggest takeaway is Assessment IS Learning, where how we evaluate and measure #learning, or #Impact, should be: 1. #Authentic - aligns to discipline-specific skills, hence rather than assessing attainment of theories, #application of learned theories should be assessed instead. 2. #Meaningful - where students are able to connect personally with the assessment as being directly #relevant to their own interests, goals, ambitions, expectations or experiences 3. #Inclusive - options are available for #Representation #engagement #Expression #UDL to ensure the class material, activities and assessments are accessible and useful to all. Also love seeing how similar 'Performance-Based Assessment' (PBA) is to our practice of Design, where students are encouraged to test, collect feedback and refine to enable learning from mistakes and listening to constructive feedback. References: Goodwin, B., Rouleau, K., Abla, C., Baptiste, K., Gibson, T., & Kimball, M. (2022). The new classroom instruction that works : The best research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Hess, K. (2023). Rigor by design, not chance : Deeper thinking through actionable instruction and assessment. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Rutherford, S., Pritchard, C., & Francis, N. (2024). Assessment IS learning: Developing a student-centred approach for assessment in Higher Education. FEBS Open Bio, 15(1), 21-34. https://lnkd.in/grmHffwW

We talk a lot about alignment in higher education, Unit Learning Outcomes (ULOs), Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs), and graduate attributes. These are all neatly mapped in spreadsheets and accreditation documents. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: mapping isn’t evidence of learning. It’s an assurance framework, not a demonstration of what students can actually do. In my latest post, I explore how higher education can move beyond the illusion of coherence that curriculum mapping creates, towards more authentic, demonstrable ways of showing course-level learning. It’s a call to rethink where and how we truly see learning demonstrated, not just in isolated units, but across the student journey. Link for the full piece in the comments... #HigherEducation #TeachingAndLearning #Assessment #CurriculumDesign #EchoesOfLearningAndTeaching #Mapping

Chunking and Cognitive Load for Adult Online Learners Adult learners bring ambition, experience, and often heavy external responsibilities. Yet many online courses assume “business as usual” and overload them with long modules, dense text, and deferred checkpoints. Research in cognitive load theory suggests that when working memory is overloaded, learning suffers and drop-out risk increases (Clark, Nguyen & Sweller, 2023). Here are actionable design practices for working-adult online learners: • Break each module into 15-20 minute chunks with a clear objective that matches one activity. • Use “advance organizer” to preview what’s next, “practice & apply” right away, and “reflect” at the end to anchor learning. • Limit unnecessary extras—every element must teach or guide, not distract or confuse. At Babb Education, our instructional architects specialise in adult-learner design. We help you rebuild existing content into lean, effective modules, integrate strong scaffolded activities, and set milestone checkpoints that align with adult time pressures and goals. Interested? Let’s chat. Www.babbeducation.com References Clark, R. C., Nguyen, F., & Sweller, J. (2023). Efficiency in multimedia learning: implications for adult education. Journal of Applied Learning Science, 1(2), 45-58. https://lnkd.in/ggA8zY_T