Based on the review and initial dialogue, consider some ideas that the team could plan to implement to ensure a systematic approach to programme assessment and feedback.

Having reviewed your programme outcomes, you may find that one action the programme team would like to take is to revise these outcomes. For some advice on how to write programme outcomes see Practical Guidelines and Examples for Writing Programme Outcomes. You can access these in UCD Infohub, by going to Curriculum Management System/Curriculum Review & Enhancement/My Vision, Values and Programme Outcomes. 

These need to then be clearly articulated to the key stakeholders, such as students, professional bodies (where relevant). (Principle: Articulated). See some ideas around articulating outcomes in the next section.

 

 

Inter-stakeholder dialogue is key to developing any plans for your programme assessment and feedback approaches. For example, engaging students and graduates in decisions around changes to assessment and feedback supports a more inclusive and authentic approach.  Planning a change at programme level involves many staff, module coordinators and students, consider incremental changes over a period of time, starting with areas that may have a good chance of succeeding.  For example, the development of peer review as a feedback approach may work best in the later years of a programme.

Students and staff may need professional development and support for any changes. Staff and student assessment and feedback literacy are key to successful changes and should be part of any planned changes (​​Carless & Boud, 2018; Deeley & Bovill, 2017). See UCD Teaching and Learning resources on assessment and feedback. UCD Teaching and Learning also run accredited modules that help support academic staff in leading planning, implementation and change.

Some initial assessment and feedback ideas that may link with your plans are set out below. These relate to the principles of space, integrated and varied. See also ideas on planning for challenges related to assessment ‘Reliability’ below, further detail and case studies on these can be explored in the Implement section. 

	Assessment	Feedback
Varied	Systematically introduce a variety of assessments based on the programme’s outcomes and assessment mapping Developing more authentic and engaging assessment approaches Exploring technology-enabled assessment approaches Introducing some negotiated or students’ choice of assessment approaches (inclusive assessment)	Providing students with a variety of feedback approaches Using written, audio, verbal feedback Using individual/group feedback Maximising automated feedback Developing opportunities for student’s self and peer review of their own and others work Using multiple exemplars to help students judge standards
Integrated	Developing a capstone assessment to integrate prior learning Developing themed assessments to integrate concurrent learning Integrating learning from work placements into the programme Using a student e-Portfolio/Portfolio to integrate learning opportunities Using assessment that build on previous modules, i.e. progressively challenging group-work assessments	Supporting feedforward (comments that clarify student’s actions for next module or assessment task) Developing students’ skills in judging their work Moving from structured assessment criteria (analytical criteria) to criteria that assesses more complex tasks (holistic criteria) Increasing student’s involvement in feedback, i.e. students asking for specific feedback.
Space	Reducing assessment load Using a live calendar of assessment hand in times Considering a week or full-day space for working on a complex problem Developing reflective time in  the timetable Replacing some summative with formative assessment in the programme/stage Introducing larger module(s), where appropriate	Building space in teaching activities for dialogue with students around their feedback (possibly reducing some content to create this space) Building time into the teaching activities, when possible, for students to jointly develop the module’s assessment criteria
UCD T&L (2018b)

Table 1: Some Initial Ideas for Programme Assessment & Feedback Enhancement

One final area to consider in your plans is the enhancement of the reliability of the programme’s assessment. At programme level, assessment reliability is often identified at examination board and can relate to: 

• inter-rater reliability: consistency between raters
• test-retest reliability: reliability from one academic year to the next

For some ideas on this see Implement.