Interdisciplinary learning and teaching often challenge established models and offer alternative ways of knowing and responding to the world. This is explored at the level of classroom activities and lesson plans throughout TILT, in sections on working with challenges, methods for interdisciplinary practice, collaboration and ethical practice. This section addresses how assessment can be authentically aligned with these methods, approaches and activities.

There are many examples of interdisciplinary learning experiences that might offer exciting, challenging and innovative content, but assess learning exclusively through exams and essays. These traditional modes of assessment have their place and can certainly be used effectively in the interdisciplinary classroom. However, they are not the only ones available. Group assessment, Ungrading, and Reflection are considered in this section, along with a range of assessment formats. Context, resources and suggestions are offered to encourage a wider engagement in alternative approaches. This video introduces some of the ways in which interdisciplinary learning can be assessed.

The rapid development of AI, such as generative artificial intelligence – including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini – has been cause for concern across many areas of education (Koh & Doroudi 2023). These new technologies can compromise assessment practices that require only recall of knowledge and abstracted argumentation. At the same time, ‘authentic assessment’ has become a key concern for educators looking to bring form and content together, allowing assessment practices to support the key skills and attributes required for the world of work and for life beyond the classroom. For Verónica Villarroel and her co-authors, this amounts to a paradigm shift, ‘involving a transformation from a culture of objective and standardised tests that are focused on measuring portions of atomised knowledge, towards a more complex and comprehensive assessment of knowledge and higher-order skills’ (Villarroel et al. 2017, p. 840. See also Baeten, Struyven, and Dochy 2013; Shepard 2000; Birenbaum 2003). There is great potential for interdisciplinary learning and teaching to develop new, authentic assessment practices that adapt to new educational contexts, supplementing the academic capabilities for which essays and exams might be most valuable.

There are also a number of important ethical practices that can be enhanced by adopting alternative assessment models. For example, expanding the range of assessment types can be a key factor in widening participation, as non-traditional learners might be excluded by educational programmes that rely exclusively on ostensibly high-level academic skills, such as essay writing (Burnell 2019). Strategies such as ungrading and allowing choice of submission formats can demonstrate care for inclusivity and provide opportunities for confidence and creativity that could otherwise be limited. Furthermore, as mental health and wellbeing crises affect learners’ experiences and opportunities, the pressures and demands of assessment should be recognised. Educators have a responsibility to design assessment that is attentive and responsive to these struggles and realities. For learners undertaking assessment tasks and educators designing and marking assessment, the following sections introduce a range of approaches that might prompt new ways of working that enhance an interdisciplinary education.

Group assessment

In the collaboration section, group work is introduced as a vital component of interdisciplinary practice. Assessment can be an important part of an educational experience that prioritises working with others and developing shared approaches. However, learners often feel negatively towards group assessment (White, et al. 2005). It can be difficult to negotiate varying levels of participation and to work actively with compromise, particularly when the high stakes of professional recognition, progression, and degree classifications are in play. This leads some educators to avoid group assessments entirely, leading to interdisciplinary learning experiences that might emphasise collaboration through a range of innovative teaching activities only to abandon it altogether when individual students submit work for assessment.

How can group work be assessed in ways that recognise individual contributions at the same time as maintaining principles of co-creation? How can learners be empowered to utilise team work as well as individual study in their assignments? How can we support learners as they move fluidly between analytical, interpretive, action-based, collaborative and participatory projects? The following strategies offer ways to develop authentic group assessment that genuinely aligns with collaborative learning outcomes:

Peer review – Incorporating an element of peer review among group members allows individual learners to input into the marking process, expressing their own perceptions of individual contributions within the group. 

Individual commentary – An individual pro forma could be used as part of the submission process. Commentary and reflection on the collaboration process and assessment of the final submission might guide individual adjustments to a group mark, for example awarding 10 extra marks for outstanding contribution and deducting 10 for poor engagement. It is also important to attend to ways in which power differences might shape constructions of ‘outstanding’ and ‘poor’.

Negotiated assessment – Inviting students to negotiate elements of their assessment can work well to develop a sense of ownership and agency (Kleiman 2007). For example, a learner could be permitted to allocate a proportion of their mark to an individual written reflection or ‘put all their eggs in one basket’ by going with the full group’s mark entirely. 

Methods training – While some final submissions may require individual authorship, introducing learners to a wide range of collaborative and participatory research methods might encourage a greater use at the research stage, which would inform the writing process in new ways. This is not group assessment as such, but it opens up individual assessment to collaborative processes.

Ungrading

Ungrading is more than just an assessment technique and course policy, it is ‘a pedagogical paradigm with implications for every classroom process, potentially creating more effective learning environments and freeing instructors to focus more on supporting learning…[and] places the focus of education back on what is being learned and why, rather than what is being produced and for whom.’ (Baylor University, n.d.). In an ungrading approach, students are not awarded ranked grades but are provided with written feedback on the assignments and assessments at the end the course. In this way, the pedagogical focus is on promoting learning, rather than achieving grades (Blum, 2020). In some cases, such as first and second year courses on the undergraduate interdisciplinary degree at the University of Edinburgh, a pass or fail is awarded based on threshold criteria set for passing each course.

Davies (2021) lists the benefits of pass/fail to include:

• Requiring teachers to be more explicit about the standards of their discipline.
• Promoting student-centred learning, and a more active and engaged approach from the learners
• Decreasing the feeling of competition between learners.

Ungrading rubrics:

The Reflection Facilitator’s handbook stresses that, ‘while ‘pass/fail’ of assessment is lower stakes than many other forms of summative assessments and ‘for completion’ is generally very low stakes, you still have the responsibility of ensuring that learners have enough information on how to complete the assignment satisfactorily. For ‘pass/fail’, just like any other summative assessment, it means having both criteria and a rubric.’ York University’s website, Teaching Commons, offers examples of rubrics from a variety of courses, for example, Gonzales’ (2015) Single Point Rubric, and Leander’s (2022) self-assessment form, adapted from Susan Blum’s (2020) book on ungrading.

Another approach is to co-create a grade related criteria matrix with students (Holt, 2024), where learners are invited to discuss and draft some wording for each grade descriptor. This could also be adapted for pass/fail criterion.

When to employ an ungrading approach:

Introducing ungrading in the first year, or even second year, is a good way of encouraging learners to engage in low-stakes (or at least, different-stakes) assessment, building up their confidence as well as their assessment literacy. As Jessie Stommel (2020) argues, the first step in ungrading is getting teachers to talk about assessment to learners: ‘demystifying grades (and the culture around them) helps give students a sense of ownership over their own education’. The pass/fail approach works well in group work and is a key factor in the design on EFI courses in Years 1 and 2. As an EFI student highlighted:

I chose EFI courses as I enjoyed the idea of different types of assessment as well as the pass/fail aspect of those assessments. Specifically for [the Students as Change Agents course] I really like how we get to work in groups for our actual assessment, that’s something that I found really enticing and unique about this course.

Reflection

Reflective practice examines our thoughts, actions and experience, and ask[s] why they happened that way with the goal of improving ourselves or our understanding

(University of Edinburgh’s Reflection toolkit)

The link between learning and reflection has been well documented in academic literature, and many studies have shown that reflective activities for learners, such as keeping a reflective journal, can reinforce their learning. Reflection also may facilitate a more ethical practice. In this section, we consider reflection as an assessment approach.

Reflection and constructive alignment:

The model of constructive alignment can be useful when thinking about embedding reflection in course design. That is, there should be alignment between learning outcomes, reflection activities, and assessment practices (Harvey, Coulson, Mackaway, & Winchester-Seeto, 2010). There are also some interesting counterpositions to constructive alignment (Gough 2013).

The University of Edinburgh’s Facilitator’s toolkit, which is part of the Reflection Toolkit, is a treasure trove of reflection-based learning and teaching resources, suggestions and tips to implement reflective practice as part of a course. The Facilitator’s toolkit shows that reflection can be positioned as:

A learning outcome: For example, the LO could read, ‘The ability to critically reflect’. If reflection is used as a learning outcome, it should also appear as teaching strategy or assessment.

An assessment: For example, the learners could be set a summative report on their course where they are asked to reflect on what they have learned and how they will use it in the future. This way we can easily see if they have obtained our learning outcomes.

A strategy: Learners could be asked to discuss a set of reflective prompts with peers during a lecture, perhaps about their study habits or how they tackle assignments, while also identifying places for improvements. This could lead learners to become more effective in meeting the learning outcomes or completing the assessment.

The Facilitator’s toolkit Assessing reflection section provides advice about when and how to assess reflection, including examples of assessment rubrics, and assessment criteria.

Reflection can be used as a method for checking-in with learners halfway through an initiative and offering formative feedback, and helpful feedforward. Examples include:

• Individual entries from a reflective journal
• A reflective blogpost
• Interim essays on development during the course or on benchmark statements
• Drafts on reflective summative assessments
• Reflective workbooks

Summative assessment examples of reflection-based assessment, and which can work well using an ungrading approach, include:

• Blogging
• Reflective diary or workbook
• Skills-development logs
• Reflective videos/audio recordings

Below are several other suggestions for how to approach reflection in assessment:

Assessment in tutorials – Lawrence Dritsas (2019) introduced a 500–1000 word ‘tutorial reflection’, worth 20 percent of the course mark, where learners spend the final five minutes of every tutorial recording how they felt about the class discussion, including their preparation.

Reflection in SACHA – David Wilson, Zoe Lai and Finn Eilenberger (2024) were students on a Students as Change Agents course, in which reflection is a fundamental pedagogical strategy. They suggest that reflection should not be graded in and of itself, but should be a practice that is embedded and intertwined within other methods of assessment: ‘heavily graded reflections can often hinder authenticity. Combining reflections with essays, presentations, or debates may be a more effective assessment strategy, comprehensively evaluating learning while preserving the integrity of reflective practices.’ 

Assessing blogs and a grade-related marking criteria – Nina Morris and Hazel Christie (2020) provide a marking template, as an open education resource, for academic staff who wish to incorporate assessed blogs into their undergraduate or postgraduate curriculum and are designed to be adapted to suit individual course needs.

Programme level assessment 

In higher education, assessment is most often contained at course level, which risks atomised learning experience that are not clearly aligned to wider programme-level learning outcomes. Moving assessment activities from course level to programme level has the benefit of encouraging a holistic approach to learning, which makes connections across distinct activities and experiences. It can also help to reduce assessment points across a programme, supporting manageable and sustainable learning and teaching. The following assessment strategies are examples of programme-level assessment that aim for consolidation of diverse learning experiences.

Portfolios – Alison Cullinane (2024) explores ‘Embedding a reflective portfolio for student development in science courses’, noting challenges, suggestions and solutions for using reflective portfolios as an overarching feature of the curricula. For Cullinane, portfolios ‘are a great way to track student achievement and move away from exams being the sole marker of success’. Portfolios are often more common in arts subjects such as design, architecture or fine art. They can take different forms, from books to websites and exhibitions. 

Workbooks – designed effectively, workbooks can be used to reinforce the ‘narrative’ of a programme, guiding learners through a pro forma that asks for specific content – summaries of work undertaken at course level, reflections on application of methods or developing knowledge about a topic, for example. The ‘workbook’ could be conceived alternatively as a journal, a logbook or a diary. There is opportunity to use this as a strategy to distribute assessment activities across the year, rather than setting a number of course-level deadlines at the end of a term of learning. 

Showcases – also more common in arts subjects, such as performance or music, a showcase event, which might be part of a wider festival, offers a way for learners to present or perform their work to an invited or public audience. Showcases, exhibitions or launches can be online or in events spaces, and can be used effectively to connect graduates to potential employers, as well as connecting in meaningful ways to organisations and communities.

Assessment types

Offering alternative assessment activities to students that can offer choice and flexibility, as well as creativity and enjoyment, can benefit both students and those who are marking them. Furthermore, designing authentic assessment, such as research bids and writing abstracts, will reflect the demands of real-world professional tasks that students will face upon graduation. For EFI programmes, this is a crucial course design element, which is appreciated by the students: ‘I really enjoyed that class as it had those aspects of interdisciplinary study as well as different forms of assessment’. Below are some examples of innovative, creative and authentic assessment activities: 

• Seen exam questions: Students are given the question ahead of the exam, which allows them time to research and prepare. Normally, students are not permitted to take in texts or notes to the actual exam.
• Peer marking and feedback: Students and teachers work together to negotiate a shared understanding of the assessment criteria, and then students are tasked with making constructive judgements about each other’s (or another group’s) work that they have been allocated. Students must engage deeply with the assessment criteria to fairly award marks, or grades and generate feedback for their peers.
• Blogs: Writing a short blog post can be more challenging than initially expected. Students are tasked with writing in the first person, are encouraged to share their emotions and opinions, and are writing for a lay audience to understand, with a relatively small number of words, the topic.
• Exhibition or performance: A physical creation or manifestation of a set task. While they are a summative assessment, the process of building up to the final exhibit or performance includes ongoing assessment, feedback, and rehearsal and revision.
• Research bid: A chance for students to practice developing convincing arguments to secure research funding. Assessment criteria could include looking for evidence of the overall quality of the proposed research; the novelty and importance of the idea; the contribution it will make to the field (and beyond); the viability of the methodology and project management schedule; and the wider impacts beyond academia.
• Dragon’s Den pitch: Based on the popular TV show, students need to research, prepare, rehearse and deliver a pitch about a business idea to a lay audience. Assessment could be a live pitch to a panel of ‘dragon’ judges.
• Respond to a news article: This could be a personal reflection to an article, or a more formal, structured response.
• Write a podcast episode or TV show script: Students are tasked with a writing assignment but one that can engage the imagination by scripting an audio or audio-visual narrative. The focus on a script reduces the demand on students to produce the actual podcast episode or video show, which may be too demanding, for example, for a 10-credit course.
• Zine: DIY magazines, which have been used effectively as a mode of assessment by geographer, Dan Swanton, as he explains in the What’s a zine? zine.
• Debates: These could be hosted in-person or online and involve teams or individuals, and requires students to heighten their critical thinking and collaborative learning skills. Assessment could be a debate-based oral group exam, or a reflective summative essay on a series of debates held by the students during the course.
• Poster: Academic posters are a good alternative to a heavy-text assessment task. Requires students to learn infographic and visual design, to hone summarising and narrative skills to clearly and concisely convey complex information or research findings, and can be set as a group project.
• Journal club: Students organise themselves into a dedicated group to read, review and discuss nominated relevant journal articles or books, with a reflection or summary of the discussion and review serving as the assessment task.
• Write an abstract to an article or an executive summary to a report: An important comprehension and summarising skill, this task asks students to write a strictly word-limited synopsis of an academic article or report.
• Conference as assessment: A student conference could be organised for students to present their final projects, and the presentations are assessed and moderated by staff (and/or fellow students).
• Finally, this Times Higher Education blog post by Monica Francesca Contrino and Rocío Elizabeth Cortez Márquez (2022) offers ten suggestions for creative assessment ideas.