Assessments End-to-End Process Review: Project Outcomes

Review and clarification of assessment policy is the single most important issue; it would immediately benefit several business areas. The Assessment Centre for Excellence is focusing on improvements to assessment policy.

A working group of the Taught Degrees and Awards Panel (TDAP) met in 2023-24 to review the policy on Mitigating Circumstances Notice to Examiners (MCEs). Further refinements have been made in 2024-25.

There are many issues with the EAP that could be addressed by a review of the EAP process and a system workflow. The review should:

• Set up system checks at defined intervals for external examiners who have not submitted reviews with automated notifications, or grant access to the EPS team to run such reports so that the team can identify and contact external examiners who have not completed the external examiner report.
• Rethink how payments due are selected. 
• Update the EAP payment data export template to include other data categories that are not currently exported, but are important to the payments process.
• Resolve recurring issues within the system since implementation.

A central system for managing marks could help resolve issues around giving feedback to students on their assessments, especially if the system included question-level marks. Access could be granted to relevant staff, or even potentially to students themselves. This would help resolve issues such as:

• Sharing incorrect data with the Information Compliance Office
• Sending data in the wrong format
• Lack of clarity for academic departments and the Academic Records Office on where marks should be stored for students who have been suspended. 

The Marks Management project provided some exam boards and academic administrators with a system for collating assessment marks for review and compilation and for calculation of degree classification. The aim is to roll out the solution to additional departments and expand it to include users beyond departmental administrators. 

While some of the issues associated with the MCE process require policy clarification and review, most, including those dependent on policy input, require updates and tweaks to the process workflow in eVision.

In recent years, there has been an increase in taught degree assessment casework processes which are now managed within SITS: eVision. Feedback indicates that this has been a successful transition. 

The inclusion of MCE appeals subprocess into the SITS: eVision solution is based on the successful end-to-end solution for the coursework extension process. With the individual MCE applications currently being processed in SITS: eVision, the additional inclusion of MCE appeals considered by EPS would be less complicated.

This process is currently managed by the Proctor’s office.

The resit process is currently based on a combination of emails and spreadsheets. A system solution that enables controlled access, self-service where appropriate, and automated emails and workflows where practicable, would be welcomed.

A central appeals system would make progress in resolving timelines and status updates issues, as experienced by both students and departmental administrators. 

There is currently an ongoing discussion between the Proctors' Office and IT Services about a new case management system which will cover the Proctor’s Office complex student casework procedures (academic appeals, complaints, academic and non-academic misconduct cases), whilst also considering the issues captured with those who attended the workshops for this review. 

Subject access request process tasks have increased risk of data breaches; the request for identification is particularly vulnerable. A central submission solution for this process could help reduce this risk and streamline the process. If the solution includes student details and can use Oxford SSO, then manual identification checks no longer be required.

Introducing an online external review form would be a quick win for examiners who fill in the report form and the EPS administrator who collates the data. At present, the forms are completed in MS Word and submitted by email. Adoption of an online digital form would eliminate the need for email.

The importance of communicating the arrival of new solutions, changes and updates to existing solutions or impromptu changes to business-as-usual timelines cannot be overstated. The communication strategy should consider the best way to communicate with stakeholders (those who are impacted by a change in process, system or solution), what level of frequency supports effective engagement and how to tailor content to different audiences. A major theme of the Assessment Centre of Excellence (ACE) initiative is to review current web-based communication channels and implement changes.