Plan for inclusive change

Planning requires a focus on inclusive change within a unit or broader program. This may be a process of iterative articulation across several cycles of the framework. Useful first steps are:

• Consult students and accessibility staff: What are their experiences of enablers and barriers to successful participation in assessment? What problems with assessment have been encountered previously? What is the pattern of adjustments?
• Consider your student cohort: What is known about their characteristics and intersecting identities? How can you find out?
• Reflect on the overall pattern of assessment tasks: How do assessment tasks assess what is necessary across the unit/program?
• Find exemplars of inclusive assessment: What other designs/approaches can inform you?

Develop assessment tasks

‘Tasks’ describe activities such as exams and assignments and form the fundamental building blocks of assessment design. Consider what you are asking students to do or know, over what time and in which space. Bear in mind inclusion is about accommodating diversity (e.g., disability, neurodiversity, social diversity and so on) and you may need to balance different tensions.

• Consider the Universal Design for Learning guidelines across tasks in a unit or program.
  • Engagement: How do the tasks align with students’ diverse motivations/goals/interests but at the same time allow them to demonstrate the learning outcomes? How might authentic assessment help create this balance?
  • Representation: How can the assessment instructions, rubrics, or marking guides be communicated to suit diverse audiences? How can people with diverse backgrounds and characteristics be recognised within assessment representations?
  • Expression: How might you offer students variety or flexibility to demonstrate or express their capabilities? To what extent does the mode of expression rely on students being able to know or do things unrelated to the learning outcomes?
• Develop scaffolding for diverse students to meet the task requirements. Supports may be practical (e.g., templates), technical (e.g., accessible software), cognitive (e.g., exemplars) or relational (e.g., enable discussion about the task).
• Anticipate common assessment adjustments: How can flexibility in task mode, format or submission timing potentially avoid the need for individual modifications? How might requirements unintentionally advantage or disadvantage particular groups of students?
• Locate the task within a broader unit or program context: In what ways can all the tasks within a program shift together to be more inclusive as a whole?

Implement assessment

As students are introduced to and then complete assessment tasks, flexibility and responsiveness to unanticipated issues are required to support inclusion. An explicit, low-fuss and supportive approach to adjustments can strengthen relationships and reduce stress. During the implementation phase, consider how to:

• Communicate with assessment stakeholders: How might you ensure that students and access staff share an accurate understanding of processes and task requirements? How might you proactively reach students whose circumstances may put them at risk of attrition, and in a timely manner (e.g., before census date)?
• Expect some adjustments: In what ways can you streamline processes to reduce the effort required to request and implement adjustments?
• Adapt to unanticipated circumstances: How do students’ needs and capabilities match your expectations? What types of assessment-related support might address any issues?
• Monitor for continuous improvement: What insights can you gain about the inclusiveness of your assessment design and processes through tutor feedback, moderation meetings, and informal student comments? What do you need to change on-the-fly? Who else is involved and should be included in the discussion?

Evaluate and reflect

The evaluation phase allows for iterative improvement and overlaps strongly with the planning phase. A key challenge is noticing your own blind spots when considering others’ perspectives. The following considerations can help educators articulate how inclusive the assessment was in practice:

• Think about assessment design in light of student submissions: How did student work match the aspiration of an appropriate and fair way to demonstrate learning outcomes? How did the assessment task enable diverse students to express/demonstrate their capabilities?
• Consider students’ experiences: Were there many requests for particular adjustments? How did the adjustments work in practice, including the unintended consequences? What patterns of underperformance or failure might need further investigation?
• Revisit what you asked students to do or know, over what time and in which space: What data or evidence, including formal evaluation, suggests that requirements unintentionally advantaged or disadvantaged particular groups of students?
• Consider resourcing: In what ways might you reallocate energy/efforts to ensure inclusivity?
• Share success: Who else would benefit from this work? What opportunities do you have to share with others?

“Inclusive Assessment Design Framework”by Joanna Tai, Rola Ajjawi, Margaret Bearman, Joanne Dargusch, Mary Dracup, Lois Harris, Paige Mahoney is licensed under CC BY 4.0