2021
Plenary Speech
Nick Saville
Aligning Large-Scale and Classroom Assessment
The alignment of learning and assessment goals is required to ensure that what is taught is, indeed, what is tested, and that both serve purposes deemed to be of value to society. Alignment is not a simple notion, but is better understood as a ‘complex, non-linear, interacting system’ (Daugherty et al 2008:253), within an Ecosystem of Learning. I will explore different interpretations of goals and alignment, and their practical implications.
Dr Nick Saville is Director of Research & Thought Leadership at Cambridge Assessment English (University of Cambridge), and is the elected Secretary-General of the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE).
He regularly presents at international conferences and publishes on issues related to language assessment. His research interests include assessment and learning in the digital age; the use of ethical AI; language policy and multilingualism; the CEFR; and Learning Oriented Assessment (LOA). He co-authored a volume on LOA with Dr Neil Jones (SiLT 45, CUP) and recently wrote a chapter on LOA as a way of understanding and using all types of assessment to support language learning (Learning-Oriented Language Assessment, Routledge).
Nick was a founding associate editor of the journal Language Assessment Quarterly and is currently joint editor of the Studies in Language Testing (SiLT, CUP) and editor of the English Profile Studies series (EPS, CUP). He sits on several Cambridge of University Boards, including: the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Language Sciences; the Institute for Automated Language Teaching and Assessment; and English Language iTutoring (ELiT), providing AI-informed automated systems. He is on the Board of Trustees for The International Research Foundation (TIRF) and was a member of the Advisory Council for the Institute for Ethical AI in Education whose final report was published in March 2021.