In a time where quality assurance mechanisms and University policies appear to be handed down centrally from the University, it would seem important that Universities redress the balance in order to engage and give ownership on teaching and learning issues to academic staff working closely with the students. The assessment of student learning is one such area where we need to redress this balance. Schmidt and Langberg (2008) describe the conflicting tensions between the new managerial top-down approach and the academic freedom associated with the bottom-up approach in particular when related to influencing teaching, learning and research in higher education. Therefore, in exploring how to develop best practices in student assessment in the College of Life Sciences in UCD, it was decided to develop a process that utilised a bottom up approach, which engaged lecturers at the cold face of teaching, to feed into the top-down University strategic plans.

Utilising and contextually adapting (with permission) an assessment audit tool designed by the Centre for Bioscience at the UK Higher Education Academy, the UCD College of Life Science’s teaching and learning representatives staff implemented a developmental review of eight of its current programmes. The tool was used as a catalyst to initiate discussions with academic staff on their current assessment practices. These discussions identified levels of staff satisfaction in five key assessment areas: 1) Alignment of programme learning aims and teaching methods to the assessments used; 2) Marking criteria; 3) Feedback; 4) Assessment overload and 5) Evaluation of assessment at programme level. The data gathered was nominal (not used for cross comparisons) and was used as an indicator of general and more specific areas that needed addressing. Using this tool as a catalyst for discussion, the teaching and learning representatives worked with staff to develop some action plans, in relation to student assessment, for each of the programmes. Therefore, these were actions that the academic staff believed were important to address. They also had to consider resources needed and to decide on time-lines for completion of these action plans. Thirty-five separate assessment related actions plans were developed across the eight programmes.

Based on these action plans, the common issues of concern (formative assessment; evaluation of assessment at programme level) were explored by all involved with the assistance of the University’s Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL). The CTL also worked with individual staff or Schools on specific actions that identified the CTL as a required resource. The teaching and learning representatives then initiated the work on the action plans many of which were to be achieved over the next academic year. The key themes emerging as issues from these 35 action plans was then fed back, by the project co-ordinator, into the University’s central teaching and learning committee. This, therefore, was the first step into incorporating the emerging issues, related to student assessment, into University policy, i.e. a more top-down approach. Initial feedback from the academic staff on this bottom-up approach was very positive. The full paper will highlight in more depth the extent of the academic staff’s perceptions on this process and will demonstrate the actions related to student assessment that resulted from the project.