If higher education is to remain relevant in a changing world, it must demonstrate that its learning and assessment practices prepare learners for both the workplace and active participation in democratic society.
(Jisc, 2022, Principles of Good Assessment and Feedback).
As microcredentials and other forms of modular, bite-sized learning become more prominent, they are reshaping expectations around flexibility, stackability, and professional relevance. Consequently, the way we assess learning is also evolving. Traditional assessments that focus on memorising information or theory can feel disconnected from real life, raising a key challenge: how can assessment remain academically rigorous while also being flexible, scalable, and meaningful for learners?
This post explores how we addressed the assessment design challenges in our microcredentials drawing on both pedagogical principles and technical innovation to make authentic, flexible assessment work in practice.
The aims of the assessment
The assessment design was guided by the microcredentials. We were aiming to:
- support lifelong learning and employability
The assessment should asses skills needed in today’s workplace, and suit those learners who are already working professionals. - be operational at scale
To be truly scalable, the assessment should minimise reliance on manual intervention and provide reliable turnaround times whilst retaining a sense of personal engagement for learners. - be available on-demand, whilst maintaining academic standards
The assessment must be available on-demand, suitable for self-paced, self-directed learners with year-round availability, while ensuring fairness, reliability, validity and quality.
How the assessment works in practice
To meet these aims, we designed an authentic assessment model that integrates learning and assessment throughout the course. Assessment is built around a work-based, scenario-driven task, developed iteratively over time, with structured milestones and a final submission when the learner is ready. This is complemented by a reflective component, enabling learners to articulate and evidence their learning in relation to their professional context.
What do we mean by authentic assessment?
Authentic assessment is based on real-world tasks. It involves making decisions, solving problems and using skills in context. Instead of rewarding learners for recalling memorised information, authentic assessment focuses on how well they can use what they know and then to reflect on their learning. The assessment tasks are directly linked to situations, problems or challenges learners may already be facing at work, or are likely to face in the future. In this way, authentic assessment supports learning during the process, not just at the end.
This approach might be pedagogically compelling, but implementing it within a flexible, modular system introduces a number of practical challenges.
Addressing the challenges of microcredential assessment
Challenge 1: Making the assessment relevant and appropriate for a range of professional learners
To meet our lifelong learning aims, the assessment needed to be robust, flexible, and inclusive, reflecting our learners’ varied contexts and commitments.
Response: Integrating authentic, work-based and reflective assessment design
The assessment is designed to be practical and relevant. It is built around a scenario-based coursework task that runs alongside the learning. Students develop their responses over time through an iterative drafting process supported by assessment milestones allowing learning and assessment to develop together. We clearly signpost employability skills throughout the learning and assessment process, helping learners see how their learning links to their professional development. Because students submit only one assessed piece when they are ready, they can focus fully on creating an output that they are proud of, since it provides them with ‘space for deeper learning’ (Dunbar-Morris, 2026).
As a fundamental 21st century skill, reflection is also a key component. Learners create a short video commentary explaining how they approached their coursework task and reflecting on what they learned during the process. The scope of the reflection task is deliberately broad enabling students to reflect on how they used accumulated knowledge to adapt and build their assessment.
Challenge 2: Enabling and managing on-demand authentic assessment at scale
Students can submit their coursework during any of the monthly submission windows. A natural side effect of this flexibility is that the technical and administrative burden is increased and raises operational challenges. How do we technically manage flexible submission windows with large numbers of students? How do we track and manage large numbers of student submissions, submitted at any time, without a huge administrative burden? We needed to find a way to automate as much of the process as possible.
Response: A bespoke automated technical solution
In essence, we needed to find a tool that supported the delivery of large scale on-demand assessment, but there isn’t currently one product that meets all of our requirements. In response we developed a bespoke technical solution to overcome Canvas’ assessment limitations and enable scalability. Find out more about this tool, MATRICULATE, in our blog post Behind the screens: Automating microcredential assessment
Challenge 3: Maintaining consistency and quality across modules and academic teams
Designing and marking authentic assessments is time-intensive, and maintaining consistency across multiple course can be challenging, particularly when working with academics with differing priorities. There is also a need to balance realistic task design with manageable workloads.
Response: Templates and AI-supported assessment design
We used AI to support assessment design: Using tools like TeacherMatic, we drafted assessment documentation aligned with learning outcomes and assessment criteria. The drafts were then reviewed and refined by academics to ensure quality and rigour. We created reusable assessment brief templates. This helped reduce development and editing time while also maintaining consistency across courses.
Looking ahead
Authentic assessment plays a central role in making modular learning meaningful and relevant to learners’ professional contexts. In the microcredentials project, it has helped connect academic study with real-world application, supporting the broader aim of lifelong learning.
Looking ahead there is scope to refine the assessment model as we go further into this brave new world. There is potential to deepen the connection the global employability skills, broaden our definition of flexible assessment delivery, develop further strategies to address challenges, and enhance our delivery through technological innovation. What an exciting new world it is!
To learn more about our work in this area, read our other posts in the microcredentials series.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash