Assessment of challenging curriculum content has been a quandary for educators for decades (Andersen & Bialystok, 2022; Richardson, 2010); and challenges them not only to think what needs to be assessed but how best to do so. Data from a survey from UCL Centre for Holocaust Education (Hale et al., 2023) suggests that educators believe discussions have potential to effectively assess learning.There is, to date, very little research of how discussions might be used as assessment. We will argue that they could provide valid evidence: (a) to judge students’ understanding of a subject during discussion tasks, (b) as a means to appraise key competencies such as critical thinking, and (c) as a way to curtail the use of AI to generate model answers. In this seminar, we present some of the data (survey responses) that exemplify rationales for using discussion as a means of assessment, some samples of curriculum content that 'need' assessing and questions for the audience.
