5 Assessment in Practice
What are the differences between current implementation of assessment and inclusive practice?
What does implementing assessment for inclusion look like?
While assessment might be designed with the best of intentions, how assessment is enacted in practice where the ‘rubber hits the road’ (what we do – or don’t do) is ultimately part of what students actually experience. This chapter begins by offering some practice principles, and then provides some examples of inclusive assessment design and practice, drawn from participants in our research projects.
Inclusive practice can offer opportunities for improving inclusion, without necessarily making huge changes to the way that assessment is designed. Nieminen (2022) offers five areas of action to promote the inclusion of marginalised students within academic communities through assessment.
| Principle | How does the principle contribute to disabled students’ agency and inclusion? |
|---|---|
| Rethinking the assessment accommodation system | Widening the repertoire of accommodations enables many forms of participation and thus agency. |
| Anti-ableist work | Shifting the focus from assessment design into re-shaping the ableist contexts of assessment. Anti-ableist work provides a fertile ground for inclusive assessment to flourish. |
| Student partnership | Reminding that AfI is not done for students but with students. Co-designing assessment directly promotes accessibility and student agency. |
| Celebrating human diversity in assessment | Recognising marginalised forms of knowledge in assessment. The agency of students is promoted as they are enabled to grow as future professionals through assessment with their diverse strengths and needs. |
| Interdependence | Emphasising the communal aspect of AfI. Without interdependence, ‘inclusion’ is likely to remain individualistic and performative, creating a false sense of inclusion. |
(Assessment for Inclusion: five principles for practice, © Nieminen, J.H. 2022. used under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license)
From these sets of practical principles, we can see that the student, their lived experience, and many diverse capabilities are a central focus rather than being peripheral considerations.
Assessment for Inclusion in Practice
To offer concrete examples of what Assessment for Inclusion might look like in practice, we provide four examples drawn from our research (Harris, et al. 2025). These are just some of the many examples participants shared, highlighting the many ways assessment can be made more inclusive. For each example, we share some context information, and the design considerations implementer teams made in order to enhance their assessment for inclusion practices.
- Students choose their assessment due dates and final outputs for submission
Unit and Assessment Profile:
- First year class, 200 students, 12-week course with 11 weekly opportunities to turn in short skills-based projects
- Students ultimately select 7 projects for final submission
Design Considerations:
- Tasks include more conventional offerings (e.g., essays), while others present more novel submission options (e.g., develop a podcast that has a full transcript)
- Choice of which tasks to engage with provides options around the timing of assessment due dates in a way that is sensitive to students’ privacy and allows them to have some agency over that flexibility and choice in which assessments they will submit; for example, the student could choose to skip a project whose date doesn’t sit compatibly with personal life circumstances (e.g., a busy time at work, family medical situations) without needing to disclose
- This flexibility means students don’t need to automatically apply for extensions when problems arise, important because lot of students don’t have the documentation in place or know how to navigate assistance planning systems, and international students (for example) aren’t socialised, particularly in the first year, about how to access those sorts of systems
- The skills that they learned from looking forward to assessments that were later down the track revealed a lot to them about their skills and attributes, and they would make choices about which weeks to turn in assessments based on that self-knowledge of learning and assessment strengths or discipline interests
Practice:
- Assessment options are listed from beginning of unit to allow students to choose their preferred submission dates and modes, considering their discipline interests, assessment strengths, and ‘personal life forecast’
- No single assessment option is a hurdle requirement
- Of the 11 submitted projects, students are marked on their top 7, allowing them to explore subfields covered
- University policy offers a five-day extension; this unit generalised that for the entire class, anybody who needs an extension can click a button and be automatically approved
2. Inclusive and authentic representations of workflows and teamwork
Unit and Assessment Profile:
- Undergraduate large enrolment unit; majority male school leavers and international students
- Group projects
Design Considerations:
- Assessments are authentic in the sense that they reflect the workflow and teamwork requirements in the profession, particularly around adopting a strengths-based approach to team members
- The national professional association accredits the course and requires teamwork to be encouraged
Practice:
- Most assessments are group project based; modes of assessment are varied (e.g., presentation, a report, technical skill development), allowing students the flexibility to work to their different strengths
- Mock interview (given a scenario and then they have to write down how they would approach that situation.) for the sector is also an assessment
- Groups are taught forming, storming, norming, performing dynamics (Tuckman, 1965) supported by group contracts, so students understand their own obligations
- Group mentors create Microsoft Teams space for every group and implement several checkpoints to look at the level of engagement of every team member and award ‘member points’ which influence their share of the group mark
- Students are required to work inclusively within their teams, knowing each member’s strengths in group presentation and reporting; empowering those students whose strengths lie in presentations and allowing other team members to engage through other task types
- Group work marks are moderated by peer evaluation marks
3. Culturally Informed Program and Assessment design
Unit and Assessment Profile:
- First Nations’ program for professional qualification
- 100- 200 students, mostly experienced students
Design Considerations:
- principles-based design and practice, established collectively by the school
- no grading; either pass, or progressing towards
- program delivery scaffolded to a high achievement standard
Practice:
- a number of days spent together on traditional Country and ceremonial time to build relationships
- assessment modes are the student’s choice; they need to be able to communicate how they know the subject matter
- critical reflection tied to literature
- reflexive research projects on positionality with respect to professional practice
- no hard deadlines to program completions, supported by relational communication between staff and students
- staff modelling trust so that graduates will embody this as professionals
4. Formatting for neurodiversity
Unit and assessment profile:
- Non-traditional students with prior professional experience, working mothers, First-in-Family, and neurodiverse students.
- Nationally accredited course
- Escape room assessment where students play their way through the escape room to access the content; an annotated bibliography, video essay, and MOOC (massive open online course).
Design Considerations:
- To avoid copyright issues, the lecturer made their own readings and videos
- In order to promote engagement and interest, the lecturer also made little animations and sourced cartoons
- People think differently and work differently through the Coding MOOC as part of the escape room (e.g., neurodiverse people may go through fits and starts in engagement – with the capacity to hyperfocus they can complete the whole MOOC in a day or a weekend. Learners who do not work in this sustained way can work in short bursts and still progress, find success and finish the MOOC).
Practice:
- The first assignment is an annotated bibliography; lecturer shows them how to use the AI function in PDF Adobe and AI summarises the articles.
- Students then choose one of the key ideas identified by AI, locate that content in the academic article, and then summarise that in their own words, on screen, in a video essay.
5. Choose your own proficiency
Unit and Assessment Profile:
- First year unit, 700 students, multi-disciplinary cohort, taking the class for numerous reasons
Design Considerations:
- Student cohort includes advanced students who are very enthusiastic, others who haven’t done the subject since year 10 and are taking it as a core, and those who are taking it as an elective,
- The unit is split into different skills: Core and advanced.
- Core skills are the skills that are absolutely necessary to know in order to pass a unit.
- Advanced students are given additional skills that will be needed into the future if the student chooses to specialise in the subject.
- Student agency is foregrounded – individuals allocate different levels of energy to attaining certain grades and capabilities according to their own priorities
Practice:
- Lecturer identifies the options for differentiation and choice in difficulty and establishes a ‘Choose your level’ approach with students selecting the mark range they would ideally like to get
- Students complete the core skills first – this includes a number of skills that must demonstrate
- Scheduled tutorials include weekend mornings and other times during the week; students can attend or watch as many as they want, synchronously or asynchronously
Beyond these examples, there are many more available within the published research literature. For example, in their literature review, Tai, Ajjawi, and Umarova (2024) identify 13 studies on inclusive assessment. There are also a number of examples included within Ajjawi et al.’s (2022) book, Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education (available open access). Assessment for inclusion isn’t just an aspiration: it is achievable in practice.
Questions for reflection
- Which inclusive practices stood out to you as most achievable and why?
- Which principles of Assessment for Inclusion (from the previous chapter) did they align with?
- Why might some practices be more, or less, achievable in your context?
- Are there any aspects to your assessment practice which you might now reconsider through a lens of inclusion?
- What might be a place to start?
References
Ajjawi, R., Tai, J., Boud, D., & Jorre de St Jorre, T. (2022). Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education (R. Ajjawi, J. Tai, D. Boud, & T. Jorre de St Jorre, Eds.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003293101
Harris, L.R., Dargusch, J., Tai, J., Funk, J., & Bourke, R. (2025). Supporting leadership in inclusive assessment policy and practice: Final report. CAULLT, Sydney, New South Wales. https://www.caullt.edu.au/project/supporting-leadership-in-inclusive-assessment-policy-and-practice/
Nieminen, J. H. (2022). Assessment for Inclusion: rethinking inclusive assessment in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 29(4), 841–859. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.2021395
Tai, J., Ajjawi, R., & Umarova, A. (2024). How do students experience inclusive assessment? A critical review of contemporary literature. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 28(9), 1936–1953. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2021.2011441
Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental Sequence in Small Groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399.
