Designing Assessment to Drive Quality
How to Achieve High-Quality Online Courses (Part 4)
Why assessment shapes learning more than we often realise
Assessment is one of the most powerful drivers of quality in online courses.
It does more than measure learning at the end of a module. Assessment signals to students what matters, where to focus their effort, and what kind of learning is valued. In practice, students often organise their time, attention, and engagement around assessment requirements — particularly in online and distance learning contexts where study time is limited.
For this reason, assessment design cannot be treated as a final step or a compliance exercise. If we want to achieve high-quality online courses, assessment must be designed deliberately, coherently, and in alignment with learning outcomes and learning activities.
Assessment as a Driver of Learning Quality
In earlier posts in this series, we explored the importance of starting with clear learning outcomes and designing activity-based learning experiences that support meaningful learning. Assessment completes this picture.
From a learning design perspective, assessment is not simply a checkpoint at the end of the journey. It actively shapes the learning journey itself. When assessment is well designed, it reinforces learning outcomes and gives purpose to learning activities. When it is poorly designed, it can undermine even the strongest teaching and content.
This is why constructive alignment remains such a powerful organising principle (Biggs, 1996). Learning outcomes define what learners should be able to do. Learning activities give them opportunities to practise those capabilities. Assessment provides the moment where those capabilities are demonstrated and recognised.
When these elements are aligned, quality is experienced as clarity, coherence, and fairness.
Quality Assessment Is About Measuring Skills
When designing assessment, one of the most important considerations is not the size of the task, but what it allows students to demonstrate.
Assessment exists to measure the skills, capabilities, and forms of thinking described in the learning outcomes. Decisions about format, length, or mode should flow from that purpose, rather than the other way around.
In some cases, a substantial written report may be the most appropriate way for students to demonstrate analysis, synthesis, or evaluation. In others, a shorter but more focused artefact — such as a presentation, briefing paper, applied case response, or reflective commentary — may provide a clearer window into student understanding and judgement.
From a learning design perspective, the key question is always: what skills does this task allow students to demonstrate, and how effectively does it do so?
At Learning Design Solutions, we work with academic colleagues to ensure that assessment formats are chosen because they align with learning outcomes and disciplinary expectations, not because they follow a default pattern. When assessment is designed with this clarity of purpose, rigour is expressed through intellectual challenge rather than scale or word count.
Matching Assessment to the Online Mode
Assessment design must also reflect the realities of online and distance learning.
Many online learners are studying alongside full-time work and caring responsibilities. They may be working across time zones and with highly variable schedules. High-quality assessment takes this context seriously.
This does not mean lowering expectations. It means designing assessments that are realistic, accessible, and fair within the mode of study.
Collaborative learning plays an important role in online courses, and group-based activities can be powerful learning experiences. However, in fully online and distance programmes, summative assessment often works best when it is submitted individually.
Group work is particularly effective when used as preparation for assessment — for discussion, idea development, peer comparison, or practice — rather than as a requirement for collaborative submission. Differences in availability, contribution levels, and time zones can make compulsory group assessment difficult to manage equitably.
Designing assessment that works with the realities of online study is a key component of quality.
Scaffolding Complex Assessment Over Time
High-quality assessment is rarely a single isolated task. Complex assessments must be scaffolded carefully over the duration of a module.
Students should be introduced to the focus, expectations, and structure of an assessment early, not confronted with a fully formed task at the end of a teaching block. This allows learners time to understand what is being asked of them, make informed choices, and build confidence through practice.
In the courses we design, assessment is typically introduced well before submission. Learning activities are deliberately structured to help students:
clarify the question or problem they are addressing
select and apply appropriate frameworks or tools
practise analysis or decision-making in low-stakes contexts
develop familiarity with the form and expectations of the task
This approach draws on established principles of scaffolding, where support is gradually reduced as learners develop competence and confidence (Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976).
Scaffolding may involve cumulative case studies, progressive practice tasks, or staged activities that increase in complexity across weeks. When assessment is scaffolded in this way, learners experience it as a natural progression rather than a sudden hurdle.
Minimising Barriers While Preserving Rigour
Another key principle of high-quality assessment design is the deliberate reduction of unnecessary barriers.
The format of an assessment should not be the challenge. The challenge should come from the intellectual work required to complete it.
This means avoiding assessment formats that introduce complexity unrelated to the learning outcomes, such as unfamiliar tools, unexpected collaboration requirements, or technical demands that have not been practised in advance. Where specific formats or technologies are required, students should encounter and practise them during the learning process.
By minimising avoidable barriers, assessment design allows academic rigour to come through clearly. Students can focus their effort on demonstrating understanding, judgement, and application.
Balancing Academic Ownership and Learning Design Expertise
Assessment design is always a collaborative process.
Academic subject matter experts retain ownership of their modules. It is their discipline, their curriculum, and ultimately their name attached to the final course. Assessment decisions must respect disciplinary standards, professional expectations, and academic judgement.
At the same time, learning designers carry a different responsibility: to keep the learner and the learning experience firmly in view.
Our role at Learning Design Solutions is to consult, advise, and guide academic colleagues towards assessment approaches that reflect best practice in online education and support effective learning. High-quality assessment emerges from dialogue between disciplinary expertise and pedagogic design expertise, with the student experience as the shared point of reference.
Feedback as Part of the Assessment System
Assessment only becomes learning when it is accompanied by meaningful feedback.
In well-designed online courses, feedback is not limited to a summative comment at the end of a task. It is woven throughout the learning experience — through model answers, exemplars, peer comparison, and formative tutor input where capacity allows.
Feedback closes the loop between learning activities and assessment, reinforcing alignment and supporting progression.
Assessment and AI: A Design Question, not a Crisis
The rise of generative AI has intensified conversations about assessment, but the underlying design principles remain unchanged.
Poorly designed assessment invites inappropriate use of AI. Well-designed assessment — grounded in application, judgement, and contextual reasoning — naturally reduces this risk.
Designing assessment that asks students to engage with specific contexts and explain their reasoning shifts the focus from production to thinking.
What Quality Assessment Feels Like to Learners
From the learner’s perspective, high-quality assessment feels fair, transparent, and purposeful.
Students understand what is expected of them, how they are being prepared, and how their learning activities connect to assessment requirements. Assessment feels like a meaningful demonstration of learning rather than a test of endurance.
That experience is the result of intentional, aligned design.
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References
Biggs, J. (1996) ‘Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment’, Higher Education, 32(3), pp. 347–364.
Boud, D. and Falchikov, N. (2007) Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education: Learning for the Longer Term. London: Routledge.
Sweller, J., Ayres, P. and Kalyuga, S. (2011) Cognitive Load Theory. New York: Springer.
Wood, D., Bruner, J.S. and Ross, G. (1976) ‘The role of tutoring in problem solving’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), pp. 89–100.