‘Breaking the mould’ towards Inclusive Assessment and Universal Design for Learning

Stephen Harper, Marie Robb & Mark Simpson (School of Law), Ulster University

Further and higher education institutions in the UK and Ireland face significant challenges in relation to student retention, progression and creating a positive student experience. There have been significant examples of best practice within the sector towards a more inclusive environment for all students by ‘breaking the mould’ and moving towards universal design for learning. Inclusive assessment in this context refers to having multiple options for assessment available for all students and ultimately negating the need for most individual reasonable adjustments by breaking down potential disability-related barriers faced by some traditional, formal, timebound exam assessments. In order to make this move, collaboration between disability services and academic colleagues is essential and this presentation aims to highlight this joined up approach discussing what has worked well and some of the challenges faced.

This pilot project at Ulster between the School of Law and the AccessAbility team at Ulster aims to initially introduce alternative assessment opportunities as a ‘menu approach’ option for:

• Students with diagnosed disabilities who have a reasonable adjustment recommendation (RAR) report to complete a take home exam as opposed to an invigilated exam.

• Inclusive assessment for all students enrolled on specific Law modules at Undergraduate level.

This project will examine the experience of students being afforded the opportunity to complete the alternative assessment option by initially gathering qualitative feedback from those students registered with disabilities during the initial phase. There has been an uptake of over 75% of those students with a RAR in place opting into completing the alternative assessment in January 2020 as opposed to formal invigilated exams on-campus. The alternative inclusive assessment consists of a ‘take home exam’ that is released on Blackboard Learn Ulster’s, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), 1 hour after the formal exam for that module takes place. The students then have exactly two weeks to complete this assessment and submit it online. The exam questions are identical for both formats of the exam papers. The learning outcomes are the same however the students taking the assessment at home are expected to be more explicit in relation to referencing within their submission, including references by way of footnotes. Within this context a 3-hour exam would equate to word count of 3,000 words for online submissions and 2-hour exam would equate to 2,000 words for the pilot.

The School staff involved have not had to make time in their busy schedules to write alternative assignments which has reduced some ‘legwork’ for academics under this approach. They are also satisfied it meets the intended learning outcomes and their professional body guidelines allowing the School to put inclusive assessment in place in this context. This approach has required collaboration from multiple departments across the University including the Registry and Exams office and the Dean of Education. In the future, long-term quantitative feedback from School of Law statistics in terms of retention, progression and marks of this cohort can potentially be examined to evaluate if the retention and progression rates have improved including academic attainment for students registered with a disability and indeed all students under the second phase. It is hoped that inclusive assessment as a ‘menu approach’ is adopted by the School of Law based on positive evaluations of student experience by this cohort. Ultimately this can enhance a move towards an evidence-based approach of inclusive assessment that can be promoted as a model of best-practice in relation to inclusive assessment across Ulster University and help to get further support from the Senior Leadership team. This can help to encourage other Faculties and Schools to embrace this opportunity to move towards inclusive assessment and universal design for learning.