Unit 1: Theories, Policies and Practices

Case Study 3: Assess and/or give feedback for learning

First Encounters with Final Marking

As an Associate Lecturer and Supervisor on the MA Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures, I assess Unit 5 final projects and contribute to students’ overall grades. During my first experience of final marking between December 2025 and January 2026, I found myself navigating the tension between my own interpretation and the standardisation of Learning Outcomes, questioning how subjectivity sits alongside Learning Outcomes within art and design assessment.

Tracing Growth Beyond the Submission

When marking for the first time, I deliberately graded more critically than my instinct suggested, knowing that moderation and benchmarking with my colleagues would follow. I was conscious of my own tendency toward generosity and of the persistent anxiety of being “too subjective” in a discipline that resists fixed measures.

In conversation with my colleague Andrew, the second marker, I was able to voice that apprehension. Rather than a technical comparison of marks, what followed was a process of articulating how and where I understood the Learning Outcomes to be emerging — not only in written submissions, but in risk-taking, responsiveness, positional awareness and sustained enquiry across the unit.

Listening to Andrew’s interpretation of the LOs broadened my own. Through dialogue, we tested and justified our readings of the work, arriving at a more considered outcome for the student. That exchange was formative for me. It revealed assessment as something negotiated and relational rather than something more rigid and technical.

Reviewing my feedback across the unit through 1:1 tutorials, group crits, informal exchanges and formalised formative feedback allowed me to trace growth that might not be immediately visible in a final document. The flexibility of interpretation meant I could recognise how students’ practices developed over time. In some instances, students responded by revisiting and extending their work, while others appeared less certain about how to translate comments into action. This variability prompted me to reflect on how clearly I communicate both encouragement and direction, particularly at points where it can begin to feel like a closing, rather than something still alive and in dialogue.

My approach as an AL and supervisor has always leaned toward dialogue (Freire, 1970), inviting students to make meaning rather than absorb judgement. The moderation and benchmarking process affirmed that instinct and strengthened my confidence in my own interpretations, while also encouraging me to look more closely at the frameworks through which that meaning is formalised and translated into a grade.

Designing Assessment for Diverse Ways of Knowing

The marking period for summative assessment shifted something in me. It not only had me questing How do I apply the LOs fairly? but it ultimately moved me to ask the question What ideas of ability are these criteria built upon?

Jain (2022) suggests that “theory offers a strong starting place to develop assessment for inclusion.” Drawing on critical disability studies, she argues that assessment is not neutral — it is one of the university’s central “dividing practices,” differentiating and ranking students in ways that often reinforce ableist norms. In art and design education, where embodied process, experimentation and tacit knowledge are central, I can see how heavily text-based or tightly standardised submission formats may privilege certain learners while constraining others.

Crip theory (McRuer, 2006) has been particularly generative for me. The concept of crip time challenges the expectation that all learners move at the same pace, in the same rhythm. It invites us to resist compulsory productivity and linear coherence. In supervision, I already try to make room for different rhythms of working through ongoing dialogue, feedback that continues beyond a single meeting, and space for students to reflect in their own time. Moving forward, I would like to make this less intuitive and more intentional: scaffolding formative submissions across time, foregrounding reflection as cumulative (rather than the need for it to being solely evidenced in submitted documents for assessment), and legitimising the multitude of ways that students can evidence their learning.

This connects with Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick’s (2006) work on formative assessment, which frames feedback as a process that develops self-regulation. When students are brought into conversation about the criteria and given space to revisit feedback across time, they start to recognise for themselves what depth, coherence and risk look like in their own practice. It can then become something they work with rather than something that simply happens to them. To me, that feels aligned with MA-level study, where students can be encouraged to develop their critical compass more deeply.

Orr and Bloxham (2012) remind us that judgement in creative disciplines is inherently interpretive and socially constructed. I’m interested in making that interpretive dimension more transparent — unpacking Learning Outcomes with students, inviting them to locate evidence of their own learning, and acknowledging that assessment is always relational.

Critical universal design (Dolmage, 2017) further encourages me to think about inclusion from the outset rather than as accommodation. Who is imagined in the “ideal” submission? Whose ways of knowing are assumed? Instead of retrofitting inclusivity and flexibility, I want to design assessment conversations that assume diverse bodies, minds and temporalities from the beginning.

If assessment inevitably differentiates, my responsibility is to ensure it does not quietly reproduce exclusion. I want feedback to cultivate agency and interdependence that extends beyond the institution and into the worlds my students are trying to reshape and reimagine.

Practically, this means:

• Unpacking Learning Outcomes dialogically in tutorials, translating institutional language into shared understanding.
• Inviting students to identify where and how they see their learning evidenced.
• Encouraging multimodal articulation of research and reflection where possible.
• Building incremental formative checkpoints that support self-regulation (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006).

Over the next academic term, I will begin integrating these approaches into my tutorials by explicitly unpacking Learning Outcomes with students and introducing structured moments for self-reflection ahead of submission. In the next marking cycle, I plan to review how these changes impact students’ ability to articulate their learning and respond to feedback. Longer term, I aim to work with colleagues to explore how more flexible and inclusive assessment formats might be embedded at a course level.

References

Campbell, F.K. (2009) Contours of ableism: The production of disability and abledness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dolmage, J.T. (2017) Academic ableism: Disability and higher education. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Jain, S. (2022) ‘Why crip assessment? Critical disability studies theories to advance assessment for inclusion’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 26(1), pp. 29–44.

McRuer, R. (2006) Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press.

Nicol, D. and Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006) ‘Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice’, Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), pp. 199–218.

Orr, S. and Bloxham, S. (2012) ‘Making judgements about students making work: Lecturers’ assessment practices in art and design’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 12(2–3), pp. 248–265.