Re-imagining and co-creating inclusive assessment designs

May 18, 2021

One of the affordances of our project Re-imagining exams: how do assessment adjustments impact on inclusion? has been the opportunity to run a series of workshops at both CQUniversity (CQU) and Deakin bringing together students with disabilities, unit coordinators/chairs with responsibility for the design and implementation of assessments, and the accessibility staff who support students to access adjustments. This has been a rich (and informed) environment in which to talk about the real-world challenges for students with diverse needs in meeting exam, timed assessment, and other general assessment requirements of their higher education studies.

As the title of the project indicates, we wanted to both understand our participants’ experiences with exams and other timed assessments, and consider how such assessments could be ‘re-imagined’. Drawing on the 40 interviews that we conducted across CQU and Deakin with students with disabilities (the majority of whom were from regional, rural or remote areas, and/or from low SES backgrounds), and the project team’s interest in socio-material framings of assessment with a focus on the people and arrangements involved in assessment design and implementation, we identified a series of general topics to shape our workshop series. These included: experiences of exams and tensions relating to inclusive exam design; the roles and relationships involved in successful assessment strategies; and exam and assessment design. Embedded in the workshops were the general principles of Universal Learning Design, and the Assessment Decisions Framework.

While these general topics were identified pre-workshop, the design of the workshops was also iterative and responsive, building on understandings and discussions that resulted from each workshop to inform the next in the series. Ideas percolated around Teams-hosted pre-workshop readings, including case studies of interviewees and reflective prompts, and participants recorded comments prior to each workshop. In the workshops, conversations moved from the general to the specific over the series, ultimately focusing on how the exams and timed assessment currently required in the units headed by our participating unit coordinators/chairs could be redesigned to more effectively facilitate the inclusion of students with differing abilities and backgrounds.

Diverse plans are now in place at both sites, ranging from unit coordinators/chairs changing assessment types and genres, and contemplating online options and choice in mode of response, to plans more focused on improving preparation and scaffolding leading into exams. The final workshop of the series will include two activities: seeking feedback on an inclusive design framework that has evolved from the interviews and workshops; and identifying key messages for university stakeholders with responsibility for making policy decisions that impact on assessment design.

For the research team, being involved in the co-creation of alternative approaches to assessment tasks and supports has been a highlight of the workshops. The student participants are contributing as representatives of the diverse cohort of students with disabilities, and their perspectives have been particularly useful as unit coordinators/chairs grapple with the practicalities of assessment change, moving past system limitations to new ways of thinking about and practising assessment. We are excited to see where this can go – more on that after the workshops at both of our institutions conclude!