Empowerng or Ensnaring?: The Implications of Outcome‐based Assessment in Higher Education

Trends towards more prescriptive formats of outcome‐based assessment in higher education are integral to proposals by the Dearing Committee to create national degree standards and a new system of external examiners. Potentially, outcome‐based assessment can enhance students' motivation and autonomy and have positive effects on curriculum development. However, if taken too far, it also endangers more critical, open‐ended notions of student‐centred learning. This paper explores possible implications of outcome‐based assessment in higher education and relates these to the experience of General National Vocational Qualifications in further education. This shows that debate about outcome‐based assessment has become almost entirely technical. If unchecked, there is a real danger that uncritical acceptance of increasingly prescriptive, standardised outcomes will create cynical, instrumental attitudes to learning in teachers and students alike and remove critical dimensions of student‐centredness from higher education.