“Equity needs to be embedded in all of our work, rather than only thought about by people with ‘equity’ in their job title.” (Professor Cathy Stinear, Pro Vice-Chancellor Equity, Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland)

On this page

• Designing more inclusive assessments using culturally sustaining approaches
• What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)?
• Principles of Universal Design for Learning
• Tools for improving your UDL practices
• Designing more inclusive assessments using UDL
• Scalability in inclusive design
• Strategic links
• Useful tools

Inclusive design considers a broad, diverse, and intersecting constellation of ways of being that includes, but is not limited to, the priority groups identified by the Equity Office and Inclusive Learning.

When thinking about diverse groups, remember people often fall into multiple categories (e.g., nationality, ethnicity, cultural identity, religion, gender identity, sexual identity, dis/ability, neurodiversity, socio-economic status…), sometimes temporarily (e.g., an injury that limits mobility while recovering; technology issues, which means audio visual is not accessible).

Inclusive design includes designing for accessibility to respect learners with varying levels of motor control, sensory perception, or cognitive ability. Developing accessible content improves the learning experience, not only for those with special requirements but for everyone.

Other influences in diversity among learners can be described by differences in emotions, self- motivation/ determination, ability to sustain effort, self-regulation etc. (Ministry of Education, n.d.).

The range of needs and challenges among learners is under-reported and often unrealised, even by the learners themselves. Therefore, it is imperative that our approach to inclusive design is pre-emptive and not merely reactive.

Culturally sustaining pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) are two approaches to designing assessments that can support our diverse learners to thrive.

Designing more inclusive assessments using culturally sustaining approaches

“Within its procedures, structures and systems, assessment codifies cultural, disciplinary and individual norms, values and knowledge hierarchies. Moreover, it inculcates these within the learner: to perform well in assessment, learners must adhere to these unconscious rules and value systems, continuously replicating them, and, eventually, internalising them.

For those to whom these norms, values and knowledge hierarchies are unfamiliar or different to those central to their own cultural and social habitus and individual identities, a disconnect occurs: their habitus and identity are not recognized by that of the dominant assessment procedures and practices, implying their lack of value. This can lead to apathy, alienation and self-disqualification, to resistance and advocacy for change, or to assimilation to the norm.” (Hanesworth et al., 2018)

The quote above—from the article “A typology for a social justice approach to assessment”—reminds us of the magnitude of impact that assessment has on our students. What and how we assess implicitly affirms certain ways of thinking and being in the world. We must take care with our assessment design choices and practices to ensure that we do not alienate or disempower our students.

Our cultures are influenced by our intersecting differences, for example age, sex, gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, education, national origin, or any other distinguishing characteristic or trait. Teaching in a culturally sustaining manner actively supports our students to strengthen “the cultural and linguistic competence of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural competence.” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). We not only want our teaching and assessment practices to support and empower our students to succeed as who they are but enable them to skilfully navigate spaces where they are often the minority.

Hanesworth et al. (2018) stress that culturally sustaining and social justice approaches are “not a matter of tailoring curriculum, teaching and assessment to fit the individual.” Instead, they are a “question of developing social practices that nurture the unique talents of every student. Personalisation, in this sense, is a collective (and intentional) activity; it is social, not individual. It is also collective in that the values and attitudes that educators and students bring to learning are derived from, and embedded in, a collective organizational ethos that frames all learning, teaching and assessment practices.” (p. 107). One way of doing this is to work towards developing a true partnership with students in the decision-making processes for assessments. By drawing upon the combined depths of knowledge of staff and students when co-creating assessment practices, you:

• Show that you respect the experiences and backgrounds of your diverse students.
• “Make space for different ways of thinking, being and doing to be recognized and incorporated.”
• “Enable assessment that is both inclusive of linguistic, literate and cultural pluralism and that also gives legitimacy to different ways of knowing through primacy of place at point-of-design.”
• Enable students to take ownership of their own learning. They are able to start from where, and who, they are, building upon their prior knowledge, strengths, interests and preferences (Hanesworth et al., 2018, pp. 105-106).

For more information on designing student choice into assessments, see student choice.

Teaching well (and assessing well) needs to incorporate our context of being located in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, with ways and content that affirm the knowledge, language, identity and culture of Māori as tangata whenua. Work is happening within the Curriculum Framework Transformation Programme, with Pūtoi Ako leading this, but in the meantime we can be guided by Taumata Teitei and the developing Toitū Waipapa Framework.

Some other resources that may be helpful include:

• Kerr, B. G., & Averill, R. M. (2021). Contextualising assessment within Aotearoa New Zealand: Drawing from mātauranga Māori. AlterNative : An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 17(2), 236-245. https://doi.org/10.1177/11771801211016450
• Hutchings, J., & Lee-Morgan, J. (Eds.). (2016). Decolonisation in Aotearoa: Education, research and practice. https://catalogue.library.auckland.ac.nz/permalink/f/t37c0t/uoa_alma21262091800002091
• Hetaraka, M. (2019). A Kaupapa Māori analysis of tātaiako: Considering Māori education policy. MAI Journal: A New Zealand Journal of Indigenous Scholarship, 8(2), 159-171. https://doi.org/10.20507/MAIJournal.2019.8.2.5

Principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Tools for improving your UDL practices

• Self-evaluation of UDL practices: Take this quiz to see what you are already doing that is a UDL practice and gain insight into what other things you can do.
• UDL Progression Rubric: This rubric shows how you can further incorporate UDL into your teaching and advance your practice.
• How to plan your learning using UDL: While written for schools, this guide helps you plan your learning using UDL for the New Zealand context.

Designing more inclusive assessments using UDL

Identify the purpose of your assessment

Assessments are often used for different purposes

• Accountability (e.g., for professional requirements, prerequisites, etc.).
• Student Progress (assessment of learning).
• Instruction (assessment for learning).

Identifying the purpose of your assessment can help clarify what to focus on during the design process and ensure you are not adding extraneous requirements that are not part of the intended learning objectives, or not what you intend to measure.

Consider the construct relevance of your assessment to minimise barriers for students

Construct refers to “the knowledge, skills or abilities being measured by an assessment”. Identify how the assessment aligns with the intended learning outcomes, and what you want your students to demonstrate to show they have learned these outcomes. Consider if the assessment requires additional skills/abilities/knowledge to be able to successfully complete it.

“Minimizing construct-irrelevant factors does not lessen the rigor of an assessment but instead gives a more accurate picture of what learners are actually learning in terms of the knowledge, skills, and abilities identified in the course goals… Minimizing construct-irrelevant factors helps to focus in on where students are actually struggling with content, skills, or abilities that the assessment is meant to measure.” (CAST, n.d.)

Reflect on how you could minimise or remove potential barriers in assessments

Designing with the UDL principles in mind (providing for multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression) can assist in supporting learners who may face barriers, without requiring them to disclose difficulties to you.

Our move to remote learning in recent times has highlighted how many students experience difficulties in accessing technology for their studies, such as computers and reliable WIFI, let alone specialist tools that may be required to complete assessments.

Consider how the tools of digital assessments may impact on the ability for students to:

• Access the assessment or associated resources.
• Create and submit assessment work.

See UDL principles and assessment for examples of how to apply this in assessment.

Support learner variability through flexible assessments

Consider your assessments across your course—do they provide a variety of ways that students can demonstrate their learning? If you assess student learning using only one form of assessment that requires students to perform in a certain way (e.g., text-heavy submissions only; or multiple-choice questions only), students who struggle with that format may be disadvantaged and cannot accurately demonstrate their learning.

Consider your grading practices

Sanger (2020) suggests the following to help minimise unconscious bias and make grading practices more inclusive:

• Use rubrics with transparent and stable evaluative criteria. Sharing these with students from the outset can help communicate and clarify assessment expectations and assist them in understanding what to focus their efforts on.
• Grade anonymously by removing students’ names from submissions where possible. See how to hide student names in SpeedGrader. and how to add an assignment that includes anonymous grading.
• Reflect on whether you are grading new knowledge you have taught in the course, or if you are grading students’ prior knowledge and educational background. Consider if you have communicated your expectations for assessments clearly and given students support in learning how to achieve this in the assessment.
• Offer honest, direct, and constructive feedback to your students—see feedback and feedforward.
• In your feedback, direct students to additional resources that may be helpful:
  • Learning Essentials.
  • Academic skills workshops from Libraries and Learning Services.
  • English Language Enrichment resources and workshops.
• Encourage students to talk with you during your office hours for additional help if required.
• Use exemplars to facilitate a class discussion on what makes particular work successful. This can help communicate your expectations for the assessment in a clear and transparent manner, and also develop students skills in self-regulation and self-assessment. A potentially helpful source of exemplars of academic writing may be AWA: Academic Writing at Auckland.

Scalability in inclusive design

While designing for inclusivity from the outset requires an investment in time and effort initially, it means you spend less time and effort later trying to address accommodations in an ad hoc fashion.

Students don’t always disclose when they need assistance, or indeed even realise there is an issue they can be supported with, so teachers don’t always know when something is a barrier for students. Good inclusive design makes learning more accessible for all students in your course.

One simple example of how inclusive design makes learning more accessible for all is in the practice of providing closed captioning and transcripts for multimedia. As well as making the content more accessible for hearing impaired individuals, it supports other students, such as students for whom English is an additional language, students who prefer to read content rather than just listen, students who have internet access issues and cannot stream video content.

It can be easy to be overwhelmed with the different aspects of inclusive design but remember that design doesn’t need to be perfect for it to be better. Take a more pragmatic ‘get it as good as you can in the time that you have’ approach and continuously make improvements iteratively, taking advantage of student feedback and other evaluation measures and your own reflections to help inform your design decisions and priorities.

For example, you could start off by focusing on a few aspects of making your assessments and courses more inclusive, e.g., looking at introducing more student choice into your assessments; or adding one more format to your resources, e.g., video captions or transcripts. Build on what you learn so that it eventually becomes second nature as just part of what you do in your assessment and course design and teaching practices.