On December 2nd 2010, Jane delivered a keynote address for the Self Assessment for Quality conference, hosted by the Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin, New Zealand.
The audience were representatives from tertiary (=higher) education organisations from throughout Aotearoa New Zealand working to implement a new evaluative approach to quality assurance, where they ask and answer questions about the quality of their offerings and services and the value of their outcomes for learners and other key stakeholders (such as employers, communities and iwi).
The theme of the conference was Self-Assessment for Quality: How do you know good when you see it?
Jane’s topic was Actionable Self-assessment and Evaluation for the Real World and covered such insights as:
- What distinguishes real, genuine, actionable self-assessment and evaluation from the rest?
- Why evaluative questions drive actionability
- How NOT to answer evaluative questions – using the all-too-common value-free or reasoning-free approaches
- Why it’s completely invalid to make a logical leap that skips the crucial values step
- 7 steps to actionable answers – some really practical nuts and bolts
- Why broad-brush rubrics work better than narrow quantitative indicators
- Balancing SMART with SPICED indicators
- Visible values as the key to actionable answers
