In this blog post, Professor Patrick Walsh and Dr Neil Lent unpack what ‘programme-level assessment’ means, and explain why it is an important approach for effective curriculum design. This post is part of the March-June Learning & Teaching Enhancement theme: Assessment and feedback revisited↗️.
What is programme-level assessment?
Programme-level assessment has many names (e.g., Integrated Programme Assessment, or programme-focussed assessment), but has two key elements. The first is common to all: assessment focuses on stage- or programme-level learning outcomes. The second element, which is not common to all, is assessment that encourages students to combine learning from different parts of a programme (within or across years). Therefore, it can be defined as planning, conducting, and overseeing assessment and feedback holistically across programmes rather than course level, where assessment and feedback builds progressively across the programme lifecycle.
Why is it important?
While our current model of assessment and feedback may work, it can be enhanced. Assessments exclusively at course-level leads to a siloed approach to learning and assessment with a focus on assessment within individual courses, rather than how best to assess a particular programme learning outcome. This can lead to shallow learning (Whitfield & Hartley, 2019).
Programme-level assessment has potential to overcome some of these limitations. It can ensure that programme learning outcomes (for which we award degrees) are met by all students awarded a degree. Furthermore, they can be tested in a more holistic way. The breaking down of silos between courses has several potential advantages. It can help study across a programme to be a coherent, joined-up experience for students. This can help them to develop their own understanding of assessment and feedback, which is experienced as part of a developmental journey. This, in turn, can help students take a greater responsibility for their learning and become self-regulated learners as part of an enhanced educational experience.
Drawing from the second element of programme-level assessment, assessing across multiple courses or years can also have advantages. It can reduce the overall number of assessments required to meet programme learning outcomes. When implemented at Brunel University, the amount of summative assessment per year dropped by two-thirds (Harvey, Rand-Weaver & Tree, 2017). There are obvious benefits for staff, and this also helps students’ experiences: reducing over-assessment (where the same learning outcome is assessed multiple times across multiple courses), and removing logjams where assessment deadlines are bunched up.
Ironically, fewer assessments can lead to greater diversity of assessments and more authentic assessment. In real life, we are often required to pull understanding, learning and experiences from multiple sources and activities to be productive. Therefore, programme-level assessment across multiple courses creates a more realistic experience. Similarly, assessing programmatically provides more time (for students) to build towards novel and flexible assessments, increasing the diversity of assessments encountered.
All of this can promote greater student satisfaction and wellbeing, while also reducing pressures on staff.
How can programme-level assessment be achieved?
While there are many advantages, the benefits of programme-level assessment will require new and/or additional effort or resources. In institutions where programme-level assessment has been successfully implemented, additional resources were made available. There are two broad models for implementing programme-level assessment and there is variation in the amount of effort required.
Method 1, the more systemic method, involves changing institutional regulations to permit the separation of assessment from learning/study. This is rare across UK institutions, only occurring, to our knowledge, at Brunel University.
The more prevalent, Method 2, involves integrating programme-level assessment into the existing course and credit structures. Assessments still reside in specific courses, but explicitly draw from multiple courses or across multiple years. In Biological Sciences, we have instituted this practice in our Year 1 and Year 2 compulsory courses, with a personal development and skills portfolio that “exists” in four courses but is only assessed twice and makes up 25% of each of the four compulsory courses (Figure 1).
Both methods start with mapping exercises, where programme learning outcomes are identified and assessments (either de novo creations or from existing courses) are mapped onto them. This highlights the key feature of implementation; that programme teams, across all involved courses, come together to complete these mapping exercises. This can be done by the programme teams, but is best with independent facilitators (such as in the TESTA process or our own ELDeR process). However, this would require additional resources. The mapping exercises are only the first step. Once completed, programme teams will need to modify existing assessments or create completely new assessments that draw from and integrate the concepts, knowledge, and skills from across the programme.
Challenges in implementing programme-level assessment
Programme-level assessment does present challenges, particularly for large and diverse programmes, programmes with considerable choice for students, and joint programmes. Even in small programmes, it can be a challenge to get all teams together and agree on the exact nature of assessments (or even the essential programme-level learning outcomes). The larger the programme, the more challenging this can become. Large programmes are more likely to benefit from independent facilitation of discussions.
Where students have considerable choice in their programme, it becomes more difficult to map how students’ learning can be assessed in a unified way. This can be addressed, for example, by creation of courses that have flexibility in the content but have common learning outcomes, or through mapping to a few, most common, pathways.
Finally, joint programmes, compound the two previous problems: larger teams need to be brought together, and they may have conflicting or non-aligned priorities. Solutions will have to be context specific, and be based on understanding and compromise – which should not be beyond our ability to work through!
References
Harvey, A., Rand-Weaver, M., &Tree, D. (2017, July 4-6). Integrated programme assessment (IPA) promotes programme level learning and reduces assessment burden [Conference presentation]. HEA Annual Conference, Manchester, UK (https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/integrated-programme-assessment-ipa-promotes-programme-level-learning-and-reduces)
Whitfield R., Hartley P. (2019) Assessment Strategy: Enhancement of Student Learning Through a Programme Focus. In: Diver A. (eds) Employability via Higher Education: Sustainability as Scholarship. Springer, Cham. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-26342-3_16)
Patrick Walsh
Professor Patrick Walsh recently stepped down as the Director of Teaching for the School of Biological Sciences. He is currently on secondments with the College of Science and Engineering, to support the development of the Nucleus on the Kings Building campus as an excellent teaching and student social space, and the University Curriculum Transformation Project, looking at Programme-level assessment. His research focuses on animal behaviour, and his teaching covers evolution, animal biology and ecology
Neil Lent
Dr Neil Lent is a lecturer in University Learning and Teaching at the Institute for Academic Development. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His remit in the IAD is enhancing assessment and feedback practices within The University of Edinburgh. He has interests in the enhancement of learning and teaching, employability, and understanding and evaluating cultural change in higher education.
