Project overview
The Assessment Centre of Excellence (ACE) is funded from September 2024 to July 2026 as part of Oxford’s Digital Transformation. The initiative involves colleagues from across the University, including the Centre for Teaching and Learning, Education Policy Support, and Student Assessment Team and aims to enhance assessment practices, policy and processes, ensuring they are accessible, inclusive and clear for all staff and students.
The project aims to support the Education Committee’s ambition to diversify summative assessment tasks; review assessment-related policy and support reduction in administrative burden. This will be delivered through two goals:
- Increasing the number of courses with inclusive assessments
- Improving operational administration of assessments end to end and relevant policies. (Reducing workload burdens on examiners and professional support staff)
Each goal is underpinned by a number of priorities which will shape the programme of work. See the priorities and deliverables section for more detail on these.
Timeline and next steps
During Michaelmas 2026, the focus of the work will be:
- Launching an Inspera User Group to provide a supportive and informative space for academic administrators, and to promote best practice in the use of Inspera at Oxford
- Completing an initial period of consultation with key users of assessment policy at Oxford, to establish priorities and next steps
- Creating a series of how-to videos for Inspera to support academic administrators in their use of the platform
- Continuing to increase the number of course teams in the Centre for Teaching and Learning's (re)designing assessment consultancy service
Priorities and deliverables
With the goal of increasing the number of courses with inclusive assessments the project will:
- Increase number of courses and programmes adopting a diverse range of inclusive assessment tasks, conditions and timings
- Maximise usability of digital assessment tools
- Embed inclusive assessment practices and systematically anticipate disabled students’ needs, as stated in the APP
- support the development of policy on AI use in assessment, along with accompanying resources for staff and students
With the goal of improving operational administration of assessments end-to-end, the project will:
- Clarify policy architecture: regulation; policy; process to reduce confusion and improve operational efficiencies. Review content of assessment guidance and policy documentation
- Develop an interactive tool that allows users to navigate and understand the full annual assessment timeline
- support the creation of collaborative networks for staff involved in managing assessments to encourage knowledge-sharing
Contact info
If you have any questions about the project, you can contact the team via the Centre for Teaching and Learning at contact@ctl.ox.ac.uk.
