Assessment
Enabling all students to demonstrate their abilities, skills and knowledge: Assessment and Universal Design for Learning
Key Considerations for Inclusive Assessment at Cardiff University
The Cardiff University Inclusive Education Enhancement Model has a series of key targets for enhancing assessment, which draw on the sector recommendations outlined above. See more about implementing this in our Programme Design section, below.
Enhancement Model Targets for Assessment at a Session or Module Level:
- Modules provide learning activities and formative assessments that build students’ skills and understanding in the discipline ready for summative assessments.
- Module team(s) design and review assessments to ensure no obvious barriers to learning are created for groups of students and anticipate barriers by applying Universal Design for Learning principles to help ‘design out ‘ the need for individual adjustments.
- Assignment briefs, criteria and guidance are well designed, and all students are clear of the requirements and understand expectations of a high grade.
- Most modules plan alternative assessments from the outset providing assessment criteria and eligibility to all students.
- Module teams agree a feedback strategy and terminology to be used in feedback. Feedback is personalised to the content, and is clear and concise, relates to assessment criteria and is constructive and actionable.
Re-thinking Assessment at Cardiff University
Inclusive Assessment is a key consideration of the university-wide Rethinking Assessment Project and the Strategic approach to Assessment, so consideration of this is also very useful when thinking about assessment.
Principles
In order for HE institutions to comply with the Equalities Act 2010, when considering assessment, institutions should design assessments that are both anticipatory and inclusive. Inclusive universally designed assessment processes provide for all students whilst also meeting the needs of specific groups.
There are a series of specific recommendations for the programme-level design of inclusive assessment (Advance HE 2018: Tai et al. 2019). Programmes should employ:
- A range of assessment approaches that are accessible, non-discriminatory and timely.
- A range of feedback approaches that are accessible, interactive, ongoing and timely.
- Incorporation of student choice in assessment practices.
- Opportunities to critically engage with equality, diversity and inclusivity themes in assessments that relate to authentic real life scenarios.
- Preparation, engagement and support of students throughout the assessment process that develops their assessment literacy.
- Opportunities for students to act as partners in the assessment and feedback process.
- A programme-level approach to the design, development, understanding and coordination of assessment and feedback practices.
- Routine monitoring, review and sharing of assessment practices that embed equality, diversity and inclusivity.
Assessment and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
As a social construct, assessment could be said to comprise practices and processes in which specific values and practices are reflected and enshrined, such as (in the UK at least) rationality, individuality, objectivity and written capabilities. Recent work on inclusion and universal design of assessment has focussed on the imperative to consider the socially constructed nature of assessment, through the lens of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) (Hanesworth et al. 2019).
Assessment forms and practices are created through unquestioned and habitual use, are normalised and can marginalise and exclude certain students and cohorts for whom such practices are unfamiliar or inaccessible.
Assessment can also be seen to hierarchise knowledge: in our inevitable selection of content for assessments, we subconsciously communicate to learners what disciplinary knowledge is important or valuable, and what is not. Assessment is indivisible from individual value judgements: designed and evaluated by us, with all our complex socio-cultural backgrounds, educational experiences and intellectual and personal values. It is therefore subject to our biases.
Learn about the use of UDL in assessment in the University of Limerick:
Inclusion implications of different assessment types
For consideration of the challenges and solutions provided by particular assessment types, see the Assessment Compendium page, which details over 20 different forms of assessment, with comments on the barriers to learning for each assessment, and considerations in terms of addressing inclusivity.
Reasonable Adjustments for Disabled Students
We have a duty under the Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments to our assessments, for disabled students, once agreed by the School. There is a specific policy and guidance for staff teaching undergraduate and PGR students to support you in this.
Reasonable adjustments should not compromise the academic 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.
There is however 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, and re-organising the assessment environment
Alternative Assessments
Alternative Assessments are provided when, for some reason, a student cannot complete the assessment designed for the module or programme. This might be because of a disability, and be the reasonable adjustment required. Alternatively, it might be because of a short-term issue for the student, for example sudden ill health or bereavement, requiring an alternative remedy.
When designing your module, consider what alternative assessments might be required in these scenarios, and design these from the outset. This ensures you are being anticipatory in your design to comply with the Equality Act. Ensure you prepare assessment guides, marking criteria or rubrics for all forms of assessment, and explain the eligibility for alternative assessments to students.
Choice in Assessment Mode
Choice in assessment can take many forms: choice of topic, modes (such as written, presentation, multi-media) or scope, such as individual or team work. While choice of topic may be more familiar, the option of choice in mode or scope has been seen as more challenging to our organisational structures and processes, despite the potential to provide for Universal Design for Learning through multiple means of action and expression.
Recent post-pandemic publications support choice in assessment, highlighting how positive changes made during the pandemic enabled the introduction of diversity and choice in assessment, and exploring how these might be sustainable in the future through changes to assessment principles and practices, and through collaborating on a programmatic approach to assessment (Padden and O’Neil 2021).
In relation to student choice in assessment mode, research highlights the complexity of issues surrounding the implementation of student choice in relation to: equity, perception of staff and students, careful and transparent alignment and impact on outcomes, programme requirements and professional body standards.
Despite these complexities, O’Neil (2017) highlighted the positive impact of a limited choice for students, with the attainment of higher grades than those achieved by previous student cohorts who did not experience choice. Similarly, Hockings’ seminal review of the literature (2010: 21) suggested that having choice in assessment mode enables students to deliver evidence of their learning in a medium that suits their needs, rather than in a predetermined and prescribed format, which may disadvantage an individual or group of students in the cohort. Research on student choice in assessment by Cardiff University highlighted similar themes (Morris, Milton and Goldstone 2019).
Cardiff University is currently conducting a pilot project on the implementation of Choice of Assessment, with a view to implementation in 2025/6 academic year.
Where Next?
Map of Topics
Below is a map of the toolkit and workshop topics, to aid your navigation. These will be developed and added to in future iterations of this toolkit.
You’re on page 4 of 8 Inclusivity theme pages. Explore the others here:
1.Inclusivity and the CU Inclusive Education Framework
2.Introduction to Inclusive Education
3.Fostering a sense of belonging for all students
4.Empowering Students to Fulfil their potential
5.Developing inclusive mindsets
6.Universal Design for Learning