Programme Design

Design of Inclusivity Pages

All of the Inclusivity pages are designed following the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). You will find a combination of text, video and images, along with some points for reflection, practical examples and case studies.

You can choose to read the text or access an audio recording of the same material. The recordings are at the bottom of each page. Alternatively you could use the Microsoft Immersive Reader, which has the ability to set preferences or use the 'read aloud' function. You can also attend a workshop on the topic.

1.Inclusive Programme Scoping

We have a responsibility under the Equality Act 2010 to anticipate the needs of prospective, future students. In addition, one of the goals of the university’s Widening Participation strategy is: To attract and recruit students with academic potential, regardless of background or personal experience. When scoping a new programme, it is important to pay attention to diversity dimensions and the potential barriers to enrolment for those from under-represented groups, which may be created by the processes, procedures and practices of recruitment and selection (You can read more about these concepts on the Introduction to Inclusive Education page, and in this document from the EHRC (which outlines your legal responsibilities ), and in Advance HE also have produced comprehensive guidance on equitable student recruitment and admissions and your legal responsibilities.

Being aware of the diversity dimensions of current students in your School can help to identify areas of disparity, to inform programme design and planning, and to act as a baseline for measurement for future improvements. Access this Sway for a snapshot of diversity characteristics of all students in Cardiff University from November 2024, which may give you unexpected insights into the diversity characteristics of our students. You can obtain programme-level data on diversity characteristics through Business Objects.

2. Inclusive Programme Design

This page presumes an understanding of writing basic learning outcomes. To refresh your understanding, click on the title below, to access a summary of the process.

Writing Effective Programme Learning Outcomes

Learning outcomes are normally made up of three elements.

A verb to define the specific action that students will do to demonstrate their learning.
A subject, to specify the subject material you want the learning to cover.
The context of the learning. While learning outcomes do not need to explicitly refer to particular methods of assessment, they should include an indication of the standard of the performance that will demonstrate that the defined learning has been achieved. It should therefore be clear what a student needs to learn/do to attain that learning outcome.

Let’s see that in practical terms:

An action that can be verified empirically, by ‘the evidence of your eyes and ears’;
A subject: the given;
Performance criteria which contextualises the learning.

Examples:

Analyse the relationship between the language of satire and literary form by the close examination of a selected number of eighteenth-century texts in a written essay.
Compile a research paper which encompasses a wide range of relevant methodologies and resources.
Demonstrate a critical understanding of the technological aspects of imaging modalities, including the use of pharmacological agents, to assist with the procedures.
Design and prepare a clear and coherently structured written presentation about the biography of a building or site.

Intended outcomes should always be SMART and assessable, so their wording needs to reflect the specific knowledge, skills and behaviours students should be able to demonstrate on successful completion of the programme. For example, while we may need students to ‘understand’ a concept, we need to frame the learning outcome in terms of what are they going to do, to demonstrate that they have understood.

Writing Inclusive Programme Learning Outcomes

When designing Programme Learning Outcomes (PLOs), you are creating the conditions by which all students will be assessed, whatever their dimensions of diversity or characteristics. It is therefore essential that you identify the competence standards of the programme, and the academic standards, and that you write your learning outcomes in such a way that maximises flexibility, choice and equity in your assessments, to avoid unintended institutionalised discrimination.

Writing inclusive Programme Learning Outcomes ensures all students can demonstrate what they know, or can do, to enable them to meet the learning outcomes to their potential. This useful video from the Bologna Agreement group explains more.

Universal Design and Inclusive Programme Learning Outcomes

The new Universal Design for Learning Guidance can also help us frame our Programme Learning Outcomes, particularly in relation to Multiple Means of action and expression, as learners differ in the ways they navigate a learning environment, approach the learning process, and express what they know. Click on the heading for prompts for reflection during the design process, or visit our Universal Design for Learning page for more information.

Multiple Means of Action and Expression for Programme Learning Outcomes

It is essential to design for varying forms of action and expression. For example, all individuals approach learning tasks very differently, and may prefer to express themselves in written text but not speech, and vice versa. It may not always be feasible to build in multiple options or choices for every activity or assessment, if a competence standard must be reached, but there should be diversity in assessment mode, as far as possible.

It should also be recognised that action and expression require a great deal of strategy, practice, and organisation, and this is another area in which learners will differ. In reality, there is not one means of action and expression that will be optimal for every learner; options for action and expression are essential.

Think about how learners are expected to act and express themselves. Design options that:

Enable variety in interactions in responses, navigation, and movement, and enable options in interactions using accessible materials and assistive and accessible technologies and tools
Provide options and flexibility for students in the expression and communication of their learning, through multiple media and multiple tools for construction, composition, and creativity, challenging exclusionary practices
Build fluencies with graduated support for practice and performance, addressing biases related to modes of expression and communication
Support students in strategy development and the setting of meaningful goals, enabling students to anticipate and plan for challenges and organise information and resources

Reflection: Do you design for:

Choice or flexibility in responses, interactions, activities and collaborations within sessions?
A range of accessible resources, tools and technologies for expression of learning
Choice or flexibility in the mode students can demonstrate their knowledge or skills, such as written, spoken or multi-media?
Scaffolded support for students to demonstrate essential skills in a particular mode, for example practice runs, formative tasks and clear criteria for skills as well as content?
Support for goal setting, strategic planning, time-management and management of information, such as module and assessment maps, session plans and summaries of information resources?

PLOs and Reasonable Adjustments

You have a responsibility to clearly define the competence standards for the programme, before writing the PLOs, to ensure that students with Reasonable Adjustments for assessments under the Equality Act provisions for disabled students can achieve. Reasonable adjustments cannot compromise the competence standards of programmes or modules, as the Equality Act places no duty to make a reasonable adjustment to a competence standard. A competence standard is ‘an academic, medical, or other standard, applied for the purpose of determining whether a person has a particular level of competence or ability’. A competence standard must apply equally to all students, be genuinely relevant to the programme, and be a proportionate means to achieving a legitimate aim.

In Universal Design for Learning, competence standards have been framed as ‘construct relevance’:

Competence Standards and 'Construct Relevance'

‘Constructs are the knowledge, skills or abilities being measured by an assessment. By their nature, however, most assessments include features that are not relevant to the construct being assessed. Often the methods and materials used in assessments require additional skills and understanding. These are considered to be construct irrelevant. Construct-irrelevant features of assessments may pose barriers for some students, preventing an accurate measurement of the construct (Cast on Campus 2023).

There is a duty to make reasonable adjustments to the way in which a competence standard is assessed so that disabled students are not disadvantaged as a result of their disability. Reasonable adjustments must not affect the validity or reliability of the assessment outcomes. However, they may involve, for example, changing the usual assessment arrangements or method, adapting assessment materials, providing a scribe or reader in the assessment, or re-organising the assessment environment.

More guidance and the Policy and Procedure for Reasonable Adjustments for Disabled Students can be found on the Cardiff University intranet. There have been recent legal developments in this area in 2024, with guidance produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission: it is recommended that you read this before writing your PLOs.

Creating Inclusive Learning Outcomes: A worked example:

Returning to an earlier example of learning outcomes, from the refresher section above:

Analyse the relationship between the language of satire and literary form by the close examination of a selected number of eighteenth-century texts in a written essay.

You would firstly decide if a written essay is a competence standard for this programme: Is this an essential skill? Could the student demonstrate their learning in another mode, such as an oral presentation?

The EHRC states that universities must ‘ensure that academic staff setting assessments know which aspects of their test are competence standards which must be met, and which aspects are the methods of assessment which may be reasonably adjusted’.

Thus, if it can be justified that a written analysis is a core competence for this programme, then the learning outcome can remain. Otherwise, the performance criteria could be re-phrased to enable multiple modes of action and expression (using the principles of Universal Design for Learning), with the student being able to complete an oral or written analysis. You might also specify the number of texts, to clarify expectations for students. For example:

Analyse the relationship between the language of satire and literary form by the close examination of twelve eighteenth-century texts using your preferred mode of submission, from either a recorded oral presentation or a written essay.

3. Inclusive Assessment and Feedback

Inclusive Assessment Strategy Considerations

In the Cardiff University Enahancement Model, and the Inclusive Education Framework (2023), a series of considerations are highlighted for programme teams for assessment and feedback:

Our programme team ensure that:

Our assessment is designed at programme level, giving students a manageable assessment workload and minimising clashes of hand-in dates

Our programme uses a range of assessment formats, and enables student personalisation choice of assessment format where appropriate

Our students have had an opportunity to practice all final year summative assessment types earlier in the programme, and understand the relationships between assessments at different levels

Our assessments are clearly explained to students through module documentation, written materials and activities in class, using transparent and consistent language to make requirements clear

Our assessments design out the need for individual alternatives wherever possible (e.g. students given the choice of audio/visual formats so students with hearing/visual impairments do not require individual alternative assessment)

Our mark schemes are clearly linked to learning outcomes or competencies to ensure marking is appropriate and consistent with assessment design

Our mark schemes do not over-penalise mistakes in written English or referencing conventions

Markers’ feedback comments are constructive, and actively point out ways that students can improve their work for future assignments.

Markers provide relevant, focussed and timely formative feedback to support student learning

Our programme team are sensitive to student anxieties around assessment and feedback, so create a supportive culture around assessment, provide clear guidance, and offer opportunities for students to voice concerns

To consider the inclusivity of your assessments:

Map your assessments to the Programme Learning Outcomes

Identify any challenges for diversity: are there any particular forms of assessment which are over-represented (for example written vs speech, exam vs coursework)? (see Inclusive Programme Assessment Mapping, below).

Map your assessments by student journey

Identify: bunching, early and low stakes preparation for assessment types, potential options for adding choice in assessment, and adequate support for new or innovative assessment types. Consider what might be offered as alternative assessments for students with Reasonable Adjustments due to disability, if inclusive design is not available due to competence standards.

Map the socially-constructed nature of your assessments:

Assessment practices can be created through the use of ‘folk pedagogy’, using unquestioned and habitual forms, which are normalised and can marginalise and exclude certain students for whom such practices are unfamiliar and inaccessible. Analyse your assessments through the lens of Universal Design for Learning and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) (Hanesworth et al. 2019), being aware that we may use familiar practices (such as the domination of the written essay in UK universities), over those more familiar in other countries (such as oral examination or group work). You can read more about this on the Universal Design for Learning page.

Inclusive Programme Assessment Mapping

To map the inclusivity of assessments on a programme, we need to apply the principles of Universal Design for Learning in enabling students multiple means of action and expression. Identifying the modes of assessment across a programme enables us to analyse the range of different modes of assessment offered, and the potential barriers to attainment for groups of students. If analysed as a colour coded module-based timeline, the dominance and flow of modes of assessment becomes apparent:

A 3 year map of a programme, showing assessments by mode for each semester. Semester 1 essay exam presentation Practical experiment group project exam. Semester 2 exam essay essay exam portfolio essay.

Figure: A module-based timeline of modes of assessment.

This approach enables us to see in this example that there is a reasonable range of assessment modes across the programme, with some oral, digital and practical forms of assessment. However semester 2 in years one and two all use written modes of assessment: dyslexic students, or those with English as an additional language, might find this more challenging. Oral forms of assessment create less barriers to learning than these academic written assessment modes for these students, so a change to one or two of these assessment modes would be more equitable for your diverse students.

In terms of progression, presentations are usefully introduced in the first year before higher-stakes presentation assessments in later years. However MCQs (multiple choice questions) are not introduced in year 1, and the research project of the dissertation could be supported by earlier, smaller research projects in years 1 and/or 2.

4. Inclusive Programme Delivery

Programme Delivery

A key concern for programme delivery is the need to maintain consistency and equity across modules and elements of a programme, to ensure clarity and fairness for students. Research suggests a lack of programmatic initiatives for inclusive education, with most positive changes for diverse students evident at the ‘coal-face’ of teaching, in learning spaces and interactions between individual teachers and students (Lawrie et al. 2017)

Once a programme is launched, it is essential that all module leads, lecturers and other supporting staff are aware of the inclusive principles behind your programme design, learning outcomes and assessments, and that they have a clear set of inclusive principles to follow in their module design and teaching practices.

Essential considerations are

Module learning outcomes are designed to map to programme learning outcomes, and are written following the inclusive learning outcomes principles, above.
Module assessments are designed to offer a range of assessment modes, flexibility and choice where possible, and scaffolded support where needed.
Module principles are followed for
- the development of resources (such as identical structuring of all Learning Central module pages on a programme, to aid students with navigation)
- provision of resources (such as providing resources 48 hours in advance, and standard provision of recordings or notes on sessions)
- opportunities for support and queries (such as having a standard approach to both in-person, asynchronous and anonymous queries on all modules).
- Module principles are outlined for the expectations of lecturers during teaching sessions, which enhance students’ sense of belonging, respect for diversity and opportunities for use of multiple means of representation and engagement.

It is recommended that Programme Leads co-construct, design and distribute an Inclusive Education Principles guidance document to all module leads, to ensure there is consistency and parity for students throughout their experience of the programme. Further, regular monitoring and evaluation of modules to ensure these principles are enacted and embedded is essential.

Case Study: Ensuring consistency on Learning Central

Cardiff University Case study

It was good to see that from 2018 onwards, there has been much greater emphasis on consistent online organisation across all learning central modules, where minimum expectations in terms of learning material resources and assessment details are required to be met at the beginning of each session. Overall, in reflecting on this, I can see that this basic organisation embedded much needed inclusivity and authenticity within the teaching resources that better supported the learning community. Organisation and process is something I continue to support other members of staff on in terms of their teaching approaches. (Biosciences Programme Lead 2023)

Programme Evaluation and Learning Enhancement

When monitoring, evaluating or reflecting on the inclusivity of your programme, consider the student experience, and the operational and pedagogical design of sessions and modules

Ensure you gather the voices of all students, through a range of reflection and evaluation techniques. Advance HE has detailed guidance on the collection and monitoring of diversity.
Also consider how you will gather the evaluations and opinions of groups who are often marginalised or excluded from traditional student evaluation, co-construction and partnership activities, to ensure you respect and gather the voices of all. Many of our most disadvantaged students are time-poor and have less opportunity to engage in these types of activities, so ensure collaboration, co-construction and evaluation can be completed asynchronously, and in a range of modes, such as in oral or written form.
You can also use self-reflection: monitor and evaluate your programme for inclusive education using the Cardiff University Inclusive Education Enhancement Model, or The Inclusive Higher Education Framework and Toolkit, which has specific resources for programme design, and is a collaboration between University of Hull, University of Derby, Keele University, Staffordshire University and York St John University.

References

Advance HE 2018. Embedding EDI in the Curriculum: A programme standard. Online. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-09/Assessing%20EDI%20in%20the%20Curriculum%20-%20Programme%20Standard.pdf
Bass, G. and Lawrence-Riddell, M. 2020. Culturally Responsive Teaching and UDL https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/equality-inclusion-and-diversity/culturally-responsive-teaching-and-udl/
CAST. 2024. Universal Design for Learning Guidelines. Available at: https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
CAST 2018. UDL and Assessment. http://udloncampus.cast.org/page/assessment_udl
Fovet, F. (2020) Universal Design for Learning as a Tool for Inclusion in the Higher Education Classroom: Tips for the Next Decade of Implementation. Education Journal, 9(6), 163-172
Hanesworth, P. Seán Bracken & Sam Elkington (2019) A typology for a social justice approach to assessment: learning from universal design and culturally sustaining pedagogy, Teaching in Higher Education, 24:1, 98-114, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2018.1465405
Hockings, C. 2010. Inclusive Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: A Synthesis of Research. York: Higher Education Academy.
Kieran, L. and Anderson, C. 2018. Connecting Universal Design for Learning With Culturally Responsive Teaching Education and Urban Society 2019, Vol. 51(9) 1202–1216
Lawrie, G., Marquis, E., Fuller, E., Newman, T., Qui, M., Nomikoudis, M., Roelofs, F., & van Dam, L. (2017) Moving towards inclusive learning and teaching: A synthesis of recent literature. Teaching and Learning Inquiry 5 (1)
Kwak 2020. Culturally Responsive Teaching in Higher Education. Online. Available at: https://www.everylearnereverywhere.org/blog/culturally-responsive-teaching-in-higher-ed/
Moriarty, A. and Scarffe, P. 2019. Universal Design for Learning and Strategic Leadership. In: Bracken, S. and Novak, K. Transforming Higher Education through Universal Design for Learning: An international perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
Morris, C. Milton, E. and Goldstone, R. 2019 Case study: suggesting choice: inclusive assessment processes, Higher Education Pedagogies, 4:1, 435-447

O’Neil, G. (2017). It’s not fair! Students and staff views on the equity of the procedures and outcomes of students’ choice of assessment methods. Irish Educational Studies, 36(2), 221–236

Padden, L. and O’Neill, G. 2021. Embedding equity and inclusion in higher education assessment strategies: creating and sustaining positive change in the post-pandemic era. In: Baughan, B. 2021. Assessment and Feedback in a Post-Pandemic Era: A Time for Learning and Inclusion. Advance HE: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/assessment-and-feedback-post-pandemic-era-time-learning-and-inclusion
Parsons, L and Ozaki, C.C. 2020. Teaching and Learning for Social Justice and Equity in Higher Education. Switzerland: Springer
Rossi, V. 2023 Supporting Student Success: Inclusive Design. https://www.london.ac.uk/centre-online-distance-education/blog/supporting
Tai, J. et al. 2022. Assessment for inclusion: rethinking contemporary strategies in assessment design. Higher Education Research and Development (Online)