Leading assessment for inclusion – a new resource

1 May 2025

We are pleased to share a new CRADLE book titled Leading Assessment for Inclusion. The resource is designed to promote assessment design that starts from a place of inclusion. The book was developed as part of the Deakin Open Educational Resources (OER) grant program, and co-authored with members from Central Queensland University and Massey University.

We also want your feedback on the book. Download the book here and provide your feedback with the online survey.

Inclusive assessment can be defined as “the design and use of fair and eﬀective assessment methods and practices that enable all students to demonstrate to their full potential what they know, understand and can do.”
(Hockings, 2010, p.34)

Often, current systems rely on accommodations for specific groups making case-by-case adjustments, rather than ensuring that assessments consider the diverse characteristics, backgrounds and situations of students. This approach can be time-consuming and feel more bureaucratic than meaningful. To turn this problem on its head, and instead promote assessment design that starts from a place of inclusion, we developed this book from research in a Council of Australasian University Leaders in Learning and Teaching (CAULLT) project.

Associate Professor Joanna Tai started a research project led by Lois Harris, with Jo Dargusch, Johanna Funk and Roseanna Burke, who are co-authors on the book. The team were really interested in the idea of how leaders within universities could actually change the way assessment is done to make it more inclusive.

Joanna Tai says ‘From the research, we realised actually it’s not just for people in charge of universities, it is also for those on the ground. We thought there should be some kind of resource that would work for people who are teaching at university. People who are coming into the university system as academics should have access to some resources about these ideas, about assessment design, about inclusion. There are many little things people can do that actually make a big difference for what students experience and how students experience higher education.’

Open Educational Resource (OER)

To ensure access to the publication, the team decided to publish it as an OER. Deakin Library’s Open Education Team has been raising awareness about OER over the last few years.

‘Sarah Lambert, who was one of our PhD students here at CRADLE, was a really big advocate for open education resources. Working with her definitely opened my eyes to this idea that research and academic resources should be freely available. I guess it also comes with the topic inclusion: to be inclusive it’s got to be accessible. I don’t want it to be behind a paywall or for people to have to pay for it. I want everybody to be able to just click on a link and get to that information. We’re really hoping that the book provides inspiration and a practical toolkit, to see how to think about assessment differently. We have a section at the end which provides links out to other resources as there’s heaps of work out there.’ – Joanna Tai

Access the resource

***Leading Assessment for Inclusion***
(*PDF, 2MB*)

Or visit the Book page on our blog site.

We want your feedback!

The resource focuses on distributed leadership recognising that to make widespread change, strategy and design changes need to be implemented. It also includes big picture considerations for developing each individual’s practice. With this in mind we are seeking feedback on the resource.

Joanna Tai explains – ‘We really want to make this most inclusive version of the book possible. I have asked specific people who have a specific interest in this area to do a formal peer review but we’re also interested in everyone letting us know what’s good or what could be improved.’