Co-designing Open Access Assessment within a Virtual Transnational Multidisciplinary Collaboration

Abstract

This paper examines the analysis of an instructor’s process of auto-ethnographic data collection as they make their way on a reflective journey within an open pedagogy faculty fellowship.  As part of this professional development process, the instructor was matched with a colleague in a different discipline on a campus overseas.  The faculty pair worked virtually in a multidisciplinary dialogue to create an open assessment, aligned with a specific UNSDG, that might function in both courses, using the same directives and grading rubric.  The inductive coding of this data and subsequent thematic analysis revealed four main themes: design as lack of comfort, digital professional collaborative, tapping into participatory motivation with learners, and assessing for community.  The paper includes a reflection on implications for the field and suggests that assessment design may need to be reframed as a disruptive and unfamiliar process, rather than a repetition of internalized habits, if it is to remain authentic, effective, and transformative.