Reimagining assessment design in higher education through Design Thinking

Assessment in higher and teacher education is increasingly challenged by changing professional expectations, accountability pressures, and the emergence of generative AI, creating growing calls to rethink how assessment is designed. Despite this, assessment redesign is often approached through minor modifications rather than collaborative and human-centred innovation processes. This study examines how a group of academics used the Stanford d.school Design Thinking (DT) framework to redesign assessment within a teacher education course. Through empathy work, stakeholder collaboration, prototyping, and testing, DT enabled academics to identify tensions within existing assessment practices and develop a more authentic and professionally relevant assessment approach. This paper presents a practical operationalisation of DT for assessment redesign in teacher education and demonstrates how DT can function as a problem-solving methodology and professional learning approach for academics. The findings offer insights into how DT may support more innovative, adaptive, and stakeholder-responsive assessment practices in higher and teacher education.