Enhancing programme approaches to assessment and feedback in Irish higher education: case studies, commentaries and tools

This case study describes the development and introduction of a programme-focused assessment and
feedback strategy to the Humanities Programmes in Open Education, DCU. There are four
online/distance humanities degrees delivered by Open Education, as part of the National Institute for
Digital Learning in DCU; BA Humanities, BA English & History, BA Single Module, and the BA
Humanities (Psychology Major).
The aim of this initiative was to design a systematic programme-focused assessment and feedback
approach which ensured that students had a reasonable opportunity to meet all of the programme
learning outcomes. The development of a programme-focused approach would ensure a wide variety
of assessment types that were appropriate to the disciplines and had a customised appropriate
feedback approach for each assessment. The development of the programme-focused assessment
and feedback approach was underpinned by Hassan’s (2011) “assessment drives learning”
philosophy, coupled with an acknowledgement of the important role of feedback to the student
experience (Simpson, 2014), and of the function of assessment as not just to measure learning but
rather to encourage student engagement and development of learning (Boud et al., 2010).