Assessment Arrythmia: restoring rhythms of time, space, and practice in higher education

Abstract Higher education practice is increasingly shaped by expanding workloads and cultures of acceleration. These pressures are felt acutely in the domain of assessment. As marking cycles shorten, deadlines proliferate, and institutional metrics dominate academic time, assessment risks becoming a site of temporal strain rather than pedagogical care. This paper deploys the concept of arrhythmia as a metaphor for the increasingly fragmented, rushed, and disjointed nature of assessment in higher education. Drawing on contemporary challenges in academic practice, we argue that assessment has lost its pedagogical rhythm, becoming governed by institutional workload clocks rather than learning-centred temporalities. Engaging Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, we identify three interrelated symptoms of assessment arrhythmia: unsustainable acceleration and pace; temporal surveillance; and temporal dissonance within modularised curricula. We respond to these conditions by proposing a series of recommendations aimed at restoring more relational, integrated, and temporally aligned approaches to assessment. In doing so, we demonstrate how rhythmanalysis offers a generative framework for rethinking assessment practices and for resisting the culture of speed and intensification that pervades contemporary higher education.