Inclusive Assessment CPD: who aren’t we reaching?
Yesterday afternoon, I led a CPD session on making teaching sessions and assessments more inclusive. However, in reality, very little leading was needed. The seven staff who attended demonstrated deep awareness of their students’ lived experiences and challenges they face beyond the classroom. I had planned to introduce our inclusive assessment tool, recently presented at Advance HE’s EDI conference, offering suggestions to reduce and remove barriers. It became clear from discussions that our participants already had a wealth of expertise and were keen to share.
Those participants were familiar faces at CPD events. However, they commented that colleagues who’d declined the session were the ones who needed support. This highlights the value of our inclusive assessment tool.
Expanding staff engagement with alternative ways in
Non‑attendance doesn’t signal a lack of care about inclusive assessment. If a student didn’t attend, I wouldn’t immediately conclude laziness or apathy. I’d assume practical reasons; workload, timing, confidence, and consider how the session or its outcomes could be shared in another way.
The same applies to staff development. If we want to support more inclusive assessment practices, we need inclusive ways into those practices. That means recognising that not everyone engages with CPD in the same way, or at the same point in their planning for their teaching cycle.
Addressing overload and uncertainty
For those who didn't attend, there is no shortage of guidance online for them to explore. When I became a learning designer and started developing CPD on inclusive practice, naturally, I Googled it. I started confidently, opening tabs and skimming documents. Hours later, I had pages of notes, countless links I’d yet to explore, and the impression that if I were designing a course, I still wouldn’t know where to start or what to prioritise alongside all the other demands of assessment design.
Around the same time, the learning and teaching lead in our Faculty of Business and Law was tackling a similar issue: how to help staff build confidence in assessing diverse learners without relying on resources that felt text‑heavy, compliance‑driven, or unrealistic in time‑pressured contexts.
For both of us, the importance of this work was underscored by student feedback, which in some cases described unclear assessment expectations, feelings of cultural exclusion, and feedback practices that unintentionally undermined confidence.
It’s this combination of overload, uncertainty and student insight that inspired us to co‑create our inclusive assessment tool.
From principles to a practical tool
The initial development stage involved synthesising inclusive assessment strategies from the literature. To make this manageable, we categorised them into five domains:
- Overall design (format, structure, accessibility, alignment)
- Guidance materials
- Student preparation
- Marking and feedback
- Evaluation and review
From the outset, we were keen to avoid a “checklist culture” that previously, within the faculty, prompted little engagement. The first draft of the toolkit was deliberately visual, using questions, icons and clearly framed sections rather than dense text. The aim was to create something that could be used meaningfully in five minutes but could also support richer conversations when time allowed.
Iteration through co-creation
The next stage added day-to-day academic practice to our research. We wanted to incorporate practical suggestions and prevent overwhelm. We therefore included senior academic managers, academics, and academic support colleagues in shaping the tool through CPD workshops and focus groups.
These sessions were invaluable. Participants tested the tool in real contexts, debated end users and practical implementation, gave their own examples of inclusive practice, and challenged us on clarity, language and depth. Each cycle of engagement led to refinements in layout, phrasing and examples.
One unexpected benefit of these sessions was how much staff valued the opportunity to slow down and simply talk about assessment with colleagues. In busy academic life, those conversations are often squeezed by competing priorities, with staff left to work in isolation. The inclusive assessment tool became a shared visual, prompting discussion and supporting a sense of collective responsibility rather than individual burden.
What difference is it making?
We encourage the use of the inclusive assessment tool across module review, validation, curriculum redesign and staff development contexts. Its intention is not to transform assessment overnight, but to reduce the sense of overwhelm that often accompanies conversations about inclusivity.
Breaking inclusive assessment into five manageable dimensions helps colleagues identify small, meaningful adjustments as well as offering larger, more ambitious plans. Just as importantly, it affirms existing good practice. Many colleagues comment that the tool helps them recognise inclusive elements already embedded in assessments, significantly boosting confidence.
As one participant noted:
“Wouldn’t it be great if everyone followed this? Assessments would be a far nicer experience for everyone.”
Where we want to go next
There is plenty to do. Future development will focus on enhancing accessibility features, embedding more student voice, refining wording and offering the tool in multiple formats.
Dissemination is ongoing through CPD workshops, faculty discussions and conference spaces. The longer‑term ambition is cultural rather than technical: supporting shared understanding that inclusive assessment is not an optional add‑on, but an integral and habitual part of curriculum design.
Importantly, we don’t want this tool to become a series of quick, superficial fixes. Ideally, it sits alongside CPD spaces where we can explore mindset, talk openly about biases and assumptions, and build empathy through honest conversation. This tool is starting point as people, dialogue and reflection ultimately change practice.
Join the conversation
This inclusive assessment tool is a work-in-progress. It reflects collective thinking so far, and its future depends on the ideas, critiques and experiences of others.
If you’re reading this, we’d love to hear from you. How do you support inclusive assessment in your context? What helps, and what hinders? What makes a tool like this genuinely useful for you or your colleagues?
Dr Rebecca Quew-Jones is an experienced higher education leader at the University of Portsmouth, dedicated to advancing equality, diversity and inclusion through innovative learning and teaching.
Joanna Clarke is a Learning Designer whose work centres on enhancing student engagement by incorporating active learning strategies, while ensuring inclusivity for all learners.