Assessment approaches and practices of university lecturers: a nationwide empirical research

International educational research has for decades considered assessment a strategic process through which to foster more effective teaching/learning practices. Despite growing research evidence, assessment in the university context is still considered almost exclusively as the final moment of teaching activity, rel-egated to a control and certification function rather than a learning support function. In this context, it would be important to foster greater awareness among lecturers with regard to assessment. Training ac-tions, however, must start from an analysis of the state of the art, which in Italy is only known in a frag-mented and local way. In order to bridge this gap, the present research aimed to explore which assessment practices are most widely used at national level by university lecturers. A representative sample of Italian syllabi was analysed within the framework of a mixed sequential research design QUAL →Quant. The re-sults make it possible to construct an overall picture that outlines the prevalence of traditional practices and confirms differences between subject areas. Concluding considerations concern the value of these results in relation to possible future training paths and further perspectives of the work.