a. Brief information about the event:


FOAI-13 was held at Beykent University on 13-14 December 2019. The theme was integrated skills assessment, and the keynote speaker was Thom Kiddle.

b. Highlights from the event

The forum started off with opening speeches by the host university followed by Thom Kiddle’s presentation on “Assessing Integrated Skills”.

In the afternoon, the participants were divided into 3 groups to have an in-depth discussion on the issue at hand. The discussion topics were the feasibility of integrated assessment across levels, the challenges of the integrated assessment, the test construction, the criteria design of the integrated skills assessment. After long and fruitful discussions on December 13th, each group prepared their presentations and shared with the whole group on December 14th.
This event served as a platform through which the needs of the participants were met by getting into the depth of the principles of integrated skills assessment. During the one-and-a half-day forum, it was clearly observed that integrated skills assessment is applied in our institution and the assessment system is well thought, designed and planned thanks to the guidelines, the standardization sessions, and the criteria used for each skill in our institution. There is still room for improvement and this requires time, experience, and expertise. It was an inspirational one and a half days and I had the chance to come up with some new ideas to experiment with for the improvement of the assessment practices.