Lifetime Contribution Award 2021

Kindly sponsored by Prometric

Geoff Masters, AO, BSc, MEd UWA, PhD Chicago, FACE, FACEL, is Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) – a role he has held since 1998.

He has published widely in the fields of educational assessment and research. He is a globally renowned speaker on progressive assessment, including e-assessment. Under Professor Masters’ direction, ACER has grown from a national organisation based in Melbourne to one of the world’s leading educational research centres, specialising in assessment. ACER now has regional offices in five cities across Australia and five international offices.

As CEO, Professor Masters has presided over ACER’s embrace of e-assessment, including the development and delivery of the first digital assessments for OECD PISA in 2006 (science), 2009 (reading) and 2012 (mathematics and problem solving), using innovative interactive item formats; the first international assessment of computer and information Literacy – the IEA’s ICILS (2013 and 2018); the initiation of online adaptive assessment designs that have been implemented in national population assessment programs including the Scottish National Standardised Assessments and the Australian National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy; and the establishment of a thriving in-house software development unit that has facilitated the delivery of 30 million e-assessments.