Designing Authentic Assessment Through a UDL Lens: Creating inclusive and meaningful assessment strategies

This experiential workshop centres on Authentic Assessment, offering colleagues a hands on opportunity to design and evaluate meaningful, real world assessment tasks. While grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and incorporating elements of co creation, these frameworks primarily support the core aim: ensuring assessments test intended learning outcomes in ways that are robust, fair and offer genuine parity for all learners (Zhan, Boud, & Du, 2025).
The workshop will examine the robustness of traditional essay based assessments in the context of AI exploring how UDL can enhance both authenticity and resilience. We introduce the evidence base for authentic assessment, supported by UDL principles that strengthen clarity, accessibility and relevance (CAST, 2018). Participants will collaboratively design an authentic assessment task that mirrors professional expectations rather than simulated practice. They will evaluate the task’s robustness by considering: Are we assessing what we claim to assess? Are expectations clear? Does the method allow all students to demonstrate achievement of the benchmark through their strengths? This reflects the workshop’s focus on fairness, parity and meaningful application, recognising that identical tasks do not always assess learning equitably when learner profiles vary.
The session is explicitly experiential: staff will work in small groups to co create an authentic assessment task and evaluate its robustness, modelling the decision making processes used in real curriculum design. Participants will experience the value of co creation and inclusive design in strengthening assessment quality. The anticipated impact lies in the workshop’s immediate transferability, enabling colleagues to apply the tools and approaches directly within their own modules.