Assessing Our Students, Assessing Ourselves

For many students, the first moment when “the rubber hits the road” in their learning is when they themselves hit the road, at a multi-institution competition. Across a remarkable array of institutions and cultures, the authors assess what has been learned about assessing students in competition environments. Noting that by definition, a competition requires winners (or does it? See next chapter: A Competition Without Winners or Losers? The Ontogeny of a New Negotiation Event Format) they suggest that students might be judged either by the “outcome” of the negotiation, or in combination with or exclusively by criteria more related to “style and process,” in the way that competitions in gymnastics, figure skating and diving are judged.