ASSESSMENT

Some educators lament that they cannot exercise total academic freedom. This issue exists because of several reasons.

There are lecturers who believe that they are the authority in their own field of studies. Hence they assume they know what is best in their TnL and assessment. They believe that they can exercise total academic freedom (in a very loose sense, without referring to any form of educational assessment framework). 

There are evidences that showed non-alignment between course learning outcomes and assessment items in the final exams. This may arise from ignorance about an assessment framework or refusal to adhere to the assessment framework adopted by the university/faculty. This action may be viewed as exercising total academic freedom by certain quarters.

There is a lack of understanding on what 'academic freedom' means. An analogy is presented here. In real life, freedom to do what we want is always within the boundary of the law written by a country or a religion. Hence, the boundary IS the framework for the freedom that we can exercise in this country. Likewise, the freedom to assess in the continuous assessment and the final examinations should always be within the framework of the assessment adopted by the university/faculty. At the Academy of Language Studies (APB), the assessment frameworks are the Outcome-based Education (OBE) and the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).

 Within an assessment framework, educators have the freedom to choose TnL 

                      and assessment methods that align to the CLOs