NSS results for assessment and feedback indicate that students perceive assessments as hurdles rather than opportunities for deep learning and integrated knowledge and skills development. Academic staff report that student learning is often overly compartmentalised. Integrative approaches to assessment can overcome some of the drawbacks of traditional approaches, fostering an ethos of learning through assessment. For example, instead of each module requiring its own assessments, a semester's worth of modules could be assessed through one or two well-considered assessments that evaluate learning across all constituent modules.  

Programme-level assessment could also enable student choice of assessment task and mode. Assessment optionality appears to increase self-determination, self-management of learning, engagement and satisfaction, and promote accessibility and inclusion. However, the challenge is how to define equivalence of either load or attainment when different students choose different tasks to demonstrate the same learning outcome. 

Harmonising assessment across multiple credit-bearing learning blocks presents new opportunities and challenges related to maintaining academic standards. The current situation represents less a regulatory constraint than a self-imposed limitation created through cautious interpretation of the credit framework. The rules and systems, initially set up as safeguards for quality, now create boundaries that resist meaningful change. For attempts to modernise assessment to be sustainable, we need to reimagine robust measures of attainment while still working within the established credit framework. 

This collaborative project will bring together students, and academic and quality assurance staff from universities with different strategic priorities and missions, but with a common interest in assessment modernisation and co-enhancing the student experience.