Day one of WISEcon22 featured many interesting and insightful talks from a range of European speakers. We’ve rounded up the highlights here for you ahead of another busy day of all things digital.

After a brief introduction from our Co-founders Rasmus Blok and Steffen Skovfoged, Helle Schroll, Head of Student Services, UCL Denmark, and Sue Attewell, Head of EdTech, JISC, each gave a presentation under the title ‘Assessment Rebooted: Reflections on 2020 and Beyond’ and discussion centred on how to secure student and staff buy-in for digital assessment efforts.

Thereafter, speakers from WU Vienna, Aarhus University BSS and some of our own UNIwise colleagues gave a range of talks focusing on using WISEflow for entrance exams, teamwork and future perspectives and enhancing the API within WISEflow to improve integration.

The afternoon featured a session from UCL, with Simon Walker, Academic Lead, UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education, and Joanne Moles, Head of Assessment Delivery, UCL, giving a talk on ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ of their digital transformation project.

Alongside this UCL-led session, Gunhild Raunsgard,  Leader of Exam Unit, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and Sarah Lombrant, Operations Developer, Örebro University, gave a joint presentation on improving administrative efficiency through WISEflow. Michael Priestley, a research student in the School of Education, University of Durham, also presented the results of his qualitative study into online learning and assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring the impact on undergraduate student well-being.

As the last of our Tuesday breakout sessions drew to a close, we returned to the Garratt Suite for three more plenary sessions. The first of these was led by Professor Tim Quine, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), University of Exeter, who gave a talk on the role of artificial intelligence in digital assessment. This fascinating insight into the role of AI in remote learning presented both optimistic views for the future and some warnings on maintaining integrity whilst co-opting AI into our practices.

Following this, Dr Klaus-Dieter Rossade, Associate Dean, Director Assessment Programme, Open University, gave a talk on the future of assessment and how to realise that future now. The self-proclaimed ‘Indiana Jones of assessment’ talked about the need for assessment to be relevant, adaptable and trustworthy, before asking the important question: “if you are anxious, how can you really show what you’ve learned?”

Our final plenary session of the day came from Sally Brown, who dialled in from her home to give an engaging talk on improving assessment in years to come. Sally spoke about the need to push authentic assessment at the very highest levels of HE institutions to guarantee meaningful change, and showed us some different ways of ensuring our assessment types work for students as well as assessors.

Day one of WISEcon22 was an enormous success, and we can’t wait to welcome everyone back from another day of all things digital.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s recap of day two - and thanks to everyone who came out to the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester today!