Assessment lies at the core of higher education. It helps focus students’ learning and helps them evidence, to themselves and to others, the progress they have made in their learning and growth.
Setting, supporting and marking assessed student work takes up a substantial proportion of academic colleagues’ effort and time.
Approaches to assessment and outcomes of assessment experiences underpin the narratives crafted by many higher education providers to showcase how they secure meaningful educational gains for their students.
It’s not just what you know
Educational gains go well beyond academic assessment, yet assessment is central to student experiences and should not be limited to academic knowledge gains. Indeed, a nuanced and insightful independent report commissioned by the Office for Students in March 2024 on how educational gains were defined and articulated in TEF 2023 submissions notes that providers rated gold for student outcomes
“make reference to enhancing student assessment practices as a vehicle for embedding identified educational gains into the curriculum, explaining that their range of assessments is designed to assess beyond subject knowledge.”
Assessments that require evidence of learning beyond subject knowledge are a particularly pertinent point to ponder, because these assessments are more likely to underpin the kind of inclusive higher education experiences that providers hope to create for their students, with inclusion understood in broad rather than narrow terms.
The link between inclusion and assessment has been problematised by scholars of higher education. A narrow view of inclusive assessment focuses on individual adjustments in response to specific student needs. Higher education providers, however, would benefit from developing a broad definition of inclusive assessment if they are intent on meaningfully defining educational gains. Such a definition will need to move beyond implementing individual adjustments on a case by case basis, to consider intersecting and diverse student backgrounds that may impact how a student engages with their learning.
Well-defined
A good definition should also be mindful of (but not constrained by) needs and priorities articulated by external bodies and employers. It should be based on a thorough understanding of how to create equitable student assessment experiences in interdisciplinary settings (being able to operate flexibly across disciplines is key to solving societal challenges). It should appreciate that bringing co and extra-curricular experiences into summative assessment does not dilute a course or programme academic core.
It should be aligned to a view of assessment for and as learning. It should value impact that goes beyond individual student achievement and is experienced more broadly in the assessment context. Importantly, it should embrace the potential of generative artificial intelligence to enhance student learning while preserving the integrity of assessment decisions and the need for students to make responsible use of generative tools during and beyond their studies.
All higher education providers are likely to be able to find at least some examples of good, broadly defined inclusive practice in their contexts – these may just need to be spotlighted for others to consider and engage with. To help with this task, providers should be exploring
- · Who is included in conversations about what is assessed, when and how?
- · How fully are experiences outside a more narrowly defined academic curriculum core included in summative evaluative judgements about student achievement of intended and desired outcomes?
- · To what extent does the range of assessments within a course or programme include opportunities for students to have their most significant strengths developed and recognised?
Providers should develop their own narratives and frameworks of educational gains to create full inclusion in and through assessment. As they carefully implement these (implementation is key), they may also consider not just the gains that can be evidenced but also whether they could attract, welcome and evidence gains for a broader range of students than might have been included in the providers’ initial plans.
And suppose energy to rethink assessment reaches a low point. In that case, it will be useful to remember that insufficient attention to inclusion, broadly defined, when assessing learning and measuring gains can (inadvertently) create further disadvantage for individuals, as it preserves the system that created the disadvantage in the first place.
