Enhancing students learning experience through personalised assessments

About this project

Develop better assessment experiences for students

If you are passionate about kickstarting your career in education and motivated to improve assessment outcomes, the University of South Australia – Australia’s University of Enterprise – is offering a hands-on project-based PhD with important community impact, within the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L). 

Personalised assessment allows teachers greater flexibility to create a personalised experience for each individual student. The purpose is to help all students make progress through understanding what they can do and the things they need to work on. 

It is essential to implement personalised evaluations with individualised feedback so that we can improve learning experiences. We can do this by increasing interaction between students and teachers and ensure that students develop the qualities and abilities needed after graduation. 

Our project aims to tailor formative and summative assessments with personalised feedback to ensure that students can undertake authentic assessments and adopt a personalised learning approach. We also want to use technology, including AI, to develop an innovative and evidence-based student-centred pedagogy extending educational concepts of differentiation and individualisation,

Our goal is also to use teachers’ skills in assessment development to ensure that students achieve knowledge depth and the skills required to apply them to complex challenges in the discipline, the world, and daily lives.

You will be based within a lively research environment at C3L but also enjoy access to UniSA Education Futures and UniSA STEM. This unique setting offers an excellent space for scholarly exploration, fostering collaboration and innovation. 

Within this research context, you will have the valuable chance to interact with a diverse community of peers, including AI experts and IT educators. This interdisciplinary cooperation promotes a dynamic exchange of ideas and viewpoints, enhancing the overall research experience.

What you’ll do

In this project-based research degree, you will be engaged in various activities, including conducting extensive literary exploration and research to understand the landscape of personalised assessments in formative and summative assessments. You will then develop and evaluate AI-enhanced student-centred pedagogy. 

We will also support you to design and develop personalised assessment tools to be integrated with Moodle, Canvas, or any Learning Management Systems, and address ethical, legal, and pedagogical implications. 

Throughout the project, you will collaborate closely with peers, educators, researchers, and AI experts, and provide support in terms of building the capacity of teachers to develop personalised assessments. 

These combined efforts will contribute to a comprehensive exploration of the project’s objectives and the development of guidelines and policy recommendations for integrating personalised assessments into higher education at UniSA and the new university of the future – Adelaide University.

Where you’ll be based

You will be based in C3L. We focus on the complex relationship between human and artificial cognition, knowledge processes, and learning. Our innovative research in education onAI, learning analytics and educational technologies is world-leading. 

C3L’s researchers are amongst the most influential globally in implementing and evaluating new technologies and pedagogies to enable future learning models and have been at the forefront of the most significant educational trends of the past several decades: digital learning, learning analytics, distributed learning, augmented learning, and AI in education. Financial Support  

This project is funded for reasonable research expenses. Additionally, a living allowance scholarship of $35,200 (2025 rate) per annum is available to eligible applicants. Australian Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander applicants will be eligible to receive an increased stipend rate of $52,352 per annum (2025 rate). A fee-offset or waiver for the standard term of the program is also included. For full terms and benefits of the scholarship please refer to our scholarship information for domestic students or international students.

Eligibility and Selection 

This project is open to applications from both Domestic and International applicants.

Applicants must meet the eligibility criteria for entrance into a PhD. All applications that meet the eligibility and selection criteria will be considered for this project. A merit selection process will be used to determine the successful candidate.

The successful applicant is expected to study full-time and to be based at our Mawson Lakes Campus in the north of Adelaide. Note that international students on a student visa will need to study full-time.

Essential Dates 

Applicants are expected to start in a timely fashion upon receipt of an offer. Extended deferral periods are not available. Applications close on Friday 29 November 2024.