Designing assessment regimes
Designing assessment regimes
Design effective assessment regimes in line with best-practice principles.
What is an assessment regime?
An assessment regime refers to the set of assessable tasks within a unit, along with their respective contributions to the final grade. It outlines how student performance is measured ensuring alignment with unit and course learning outcomes. A well-structured regime also motivates learning, provides meaningful feedback, and supports students’ skill development.
What must the assessment regime include?
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The assessment regime should be specifically designed for each unit, however all assessment regimes must:
- Assess all unit learning outcomes
- Assess knowledge, skills and attributes that contribute to the student’s achievement of course learning outcomes
- Be appropriate to the level and credit-point value of the unit
- Be equivalent for all modes and locations of offerings in the same teaching period
- Include at least two major assessment tasks (i.e. tasks worth at least 20% of the total unit assessment)
- Have no task worth more than 60% of the total unit assessment, except in zero credit point units or thesis units
- Specify where and how generative artificial intelligence tools may be used, based on educational reasoning, the assessment task and its function in generating particular evidence of student learning.
- Be designed to minimise the potential for breaches of academic integrity
- Be renewed to prevent any students with knowledge of the task and/or its solution from a previous offering
- Have text-based assignments submitted electronically.
NoteFor more details on what an assessment regime must include, refer to the Assessment Regime Procedure |
Responsibilities
Chief Examiners or Unit Coordinators are responsible for designing and implementing the unit’s assessment regime. Course leaders must maintain oversight to ensure that the student journey includes an appropriate balance of tasks both within and across year levels, that evidence the achievement of course learning outcomes.
The Dean (or delegate) of the unit-owning faculty is responsible for approving the assessment regime as part of unit accreditation, and for approving any amendments. Where a coursework unit is offered in a graduate research course, the Graduate Research Committee Course and Programs Sub-committee is responsible for approving the assessment regime.
Supporting your students
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Supporting your students to understand the assessment regime used in the unit is important for establishing your expectations of students, and also allows students to plan their assessment tasks in all of their units across the semester. It is important to consider your teaching team and academic colleagues in these choices.
How to support your students
- Discuss the assessment regime of the unit in detail during the first class of the semester, or by using a short video presented in Week 1. Students should know from the start of semester what assessment tasks are in the unit, how long they are expected to be, and when they are due.
- Allow students to ask questions about the various tasks in the assessment regime, including any timings between tasks - especially those that are scaffolded (i.e. students need feedback on one task before moving onto the next). Set up a forum to take student questions and, if needed, set up a FAQ format.
- Encourage students to diarise the assessment tasks in all of their units so that they can effectively manage the time needed to complete these across the semester.
- You cannot make any changes to the assessment regime and individual tasks once they are released to students. Changes to the assessment regime should only be done in extenuating circumstances, requires Faculty approval and needs to align with Handbook deadlines.
What resources and services are available to students
Student Academic Success: Learning and Language Support
Encourage students to seek advice from learning and language support about understanding the assessment task. Students can have a one-on-one consultation with a Learning Adviser who can assist them with interpreting and analysing the requirements of assessments. They can also learn about time management, including managing multiple assessment tasks across the semester.
Health and wellbeing: Counselling service
Share this link for counselling services so that students can obtain additional support around a number of issues from managing motivation, coping with stress and/or anxiety, prioritisation and managing perfectionism. This is a free service for Monash students.
Study Support: Study programs
Monash Health and Wellbeing has a variety of study programs for students from PASS (Peer Assisted Study Sessions), Academic English workshops and stress management.
Related resources
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Provided are some relevant resources that will help support you with designing your assessment regime, including Monash's specific policies and procedures related to designing the assessment regime.
Take the time to review these to inform your teaching practice.
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The Assessment Design Decisions Framework
This site contains resources to support university educators in designing good assessments. It includes guides, frameworks, events and publications.
Marking, grading and rubrics
This resource outlines the various considerations for marking and grading at Monash, including core information about assessment rubric design.
Choosing assessment tasks
This resource describes the different assessment types and appropriate methods to implement the chosen type. This includes writing questions for different assessment types.
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Assessment regime procedure
Explains requirements of developing and implementing an assessment regime for a unit, rules around scheduling, extensions, hurdles, alternative and supplementary assessments, and communicating assessment requirements.
Marking and feedback procedure
Outlines processes and principles for marking, blind marking, second marking, double marking, provision of feedback, quality assurance, finalising results, responsibilities, and re-marking requests.
Teaching periods procedure
Defines the teaching period when learning and teaching for the unit is delivered. All teaching activities for the unit, including final assessment, are delivered within the teaching period.
Related technologies
When designing assessment tasks, it’s important to choose the technologies that would best support the assessment purpose. Depending on the method of submission, be it in class, in Moodle, or via another platform linked to Moodle, you will need to have an allocated place for it in Moodle so that students know what, when and how to complete the assessment task.
Choose the assessment tool
The following provides an overview of some of the different Monash supported assessment tools and their capabilities in terms of functionality, submission, marking and feedback - use this to inform your technology choice for assessment. Explore each accordion to find out more.
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Gradebook compatible
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Question bank
Yes
Yes
Yes
Randomised questions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Adaptive interaction
Yes
Yes
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Automated marking
Yes (except essay)
Yes
Yes (AI Feedback coach)
Yes
Manual marking
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Weighted grading
Yes
Peer marking
Yes
Yes
Yes
Anonymity settings
Yes
Yes
Yes (Open forum)
Yes
Yes
Yes
Assign markers
Yes
Yes
Yes
Turnitin compatible
Yes
Yes
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Individual feedback
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Peer Feedback
Yes
Yes
Yes
Written feedback
Yes
Yes
Yes (essay)
Yes
(essay)Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Video feedback
Yes
Yes
Yes
(in a post)Yes
Audio feedback
Yes
Yes
(in a post)Yes
Embedded rubric
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded marking guide
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
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Group submission
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Individual submission
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Late submission capability
Yes
Yes
Yes
(via user override)Yes
Yes
Yes
Set deadline
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Text file upload format
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Image file upload format
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Video file upload format (e.g. recorded video pres.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Additional considerations
Below are additional resources to assist you in setting up your assessment regime and communicating it with students.
Weighting aggregation in Moodle
This guide will assist you to set weightings for each assessment task in the Moodle Gradebook.
Moodle Unit Preview
The Moodle Unit Preview enables Monash students to search and view unit and assessment information in a clear, simple and consistent way. The Unit Preview is generated when at least one unit offering is linked to a Moodle site via the Callista block, and when the Unit Preview has been enabled for the unit from the Manage Unit Preview page.
Education Performance Standards Framework
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The Education Performance Standards identify the expectations of education practice at Monash – See the Education Performance Standards for more details.
Impact on student learning | Impact on educational knowledge | Impact on educational environment | |||||
Effective teaching and learning | Responsive program design | Student- centred orientation | Professional learning engagement | Pedagogical content knowledge | Education research performance | Education innovation | Education leadership |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | (✓) | (✓) | ||
You could address these Practice Elements by providing evidence of how you:
- Plan an assessment regime that is mapped to the unit learning outcomes and aligns with unit content and learning activities
- Plan an assessment regime that motivates learning and evidences students’ skill development across the unit and course
- Provide appropriate guidance and feedback that adequately prepares students to succeed
- Monitor the student experience of assessment in your unit/s
- Partner with students in an aspect of assessment design
- Collaborate with other staff to develop and evaluate appropriate and varied assessment tasks and regimes.
- Diversify assessment tasks to allow students to demonstrate different elements of their learning