Read a review of our first seminar for 2025: Programmatic Assessment

4 April 2025

In this post CRADLE PhD Candidate Pearl Kang reviews CRADLE’s first seminar for 2025. Dr Liesbeth Baartman joined us from HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht to talk about Programmatic Assessment. In this seminar Liesbeth outlined the experiences of research in programmatic assessment in the Netherlands and unpacked outcomes in vocational education and practice.

Programmatic Assessment: How does it work in practice?

We had the privilege to listen to Dr Liesbeth Baartman share her experience and research in programmatic assessment. Programmatic assessment originated in medical education in the Netherlands, which is also where Liesbeth is currently based, as a new paradigm that focuses on the learning journey of students as they develop into self-regulated individuals preparing to face complex and unguided situations beyond the university.

Assessment in this perspective supports the need for students to understand the link between assessments and actively engage in feedback dialogues to develop key competencies across the entire program. In this sense, decisions about students’ progress are made collectively through a longitudinal collection of qualitative and quantitative information that reflects a comprehensive overview of student learning (i.e. data-points).

This novel design has been increasingly recognised as a systematic and holistic approach in higher education to advance discussions around assessment for and of learning. More recently, programmatic assessment has been proposed as a way forward amidst the enhancement of generative AI tools in assessment to reform traditional practices without compromising the foundational principles of assessment (Lodge et al., 2023). Although the big question of whether programmatic assessment is a solution for generative AI in assessment remains to be investigated, Liesbeth emphasised how the unique structure of programmatic assessment facilitates in increasing students’ self-regulation and providing opportunities to develop evaluative judgement which should be promoted alongside the integration of generative AI in assessment.

How does programmatic assessment link to my research?

As my research topic focuses on evaluative judgement, I was fascinated to learn how essential graduate capabilities such as evaluative judgement, self-regulation, and feedback literacy were fostered through an organic yet systematic process of synchronised and coordinated assessment activities.

Seeing how these learning goals can be monitored and achieved on a holistic level challenged my conventional views on curriculum and course designs.

Most importantly, as Liesbeth shared, listening to how students thrived in feedback cultures seeking and even requiring quality feedback from teachers and other stakeholders seemed like the ideal learning environment that we hope to create for our students. Although many issues and challenges come with changes, and more so with a paradigm shift, Liesbeth’s presentation on the developments of programmatic assessment has been uplifting and inspiring as it suggests a plausible approach to sustainable assessment and highlights the combined efforts to align assessment principles to the demands of a rapidly changing world.

About Pearl Kang

Pearl is focused on students’ evaluative judgement processes, and her research explores challenges students encounter, particularly in the form of heuristics and biases that may potentially inhibit judgement practices. She gained her Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language and has experience in English instruction, translation and interpretation, political research, and media programming.

If you missed the seminar, you can catch up on our YouTube channel or our Seminar blog page.