Support for Faculties and Departments
The University has committed, in the Access & Participation Plan 2020-25, to eliminating the awarding gaps experienced by two key cohorts of students - Black British students and students with declared mental health conditions - by 2025.
The Awarding Gaps Consultation Team has thus been established for the lifecycle of the Access & Participation Plan to help Faculties and Departments to develop interventions to address awarding gaps experienced by students in their courses, or pre-empt awarding gaps likely to arise.
It works in parallel with other initiatives such as the diversifying assessment programme with the Examination & Assessment Committee, the Race Equality Charter's operational groups, the Educational Monitoring process and the Inclusive Teaching & Learning Advisory Group.
The work of the consultation team
The consultation team will collaborate with course teams from Faculties and Departments to analyse the available data, review current teaching, learning and assessment practices, and co-develop an action plan. This will necessarily focus on awarding gap data illustrated in the Exam Results Analytics dashboard alongside more local analyses of patterns of assessment design and academic performance within courses. The consultation team will then assist in longer-term evaluation of initiatives and the sharing of good practices.
Support offered by the consultation team will include:
- collating and analysing relevant available data
- advising on how to evaluate the extent to which educational practices are inclusive
- facilitating discussion about the reasons for any identified awarding gaps
- advising on the development of an action plan
An action plan might, for example, include changes to assessment practices or design, feedback, marking or reviews of paper / Tripos learning outcomes with staff and students. It may intersect with pastoral support within Colleges and in many cases will involve integration of academic skills development into the curriculum or educational practices.
Individual Faculties / Departments will work with the consultation team over one of two cycles each academic year.
Expressions of interest
Both planned calls for expressions of interest during 2021-22 have now completed. We still encourage you to get in contact with the team if you are interested in working with us in future or have questions.
We are calling for expressions of interest from Faculties and Departments seeking advice and support for their focused work on awarding gaps.
We anticipate working with four undergraduate courses across 2021-22, with priority given to courses who have already self-identified awarding gaps, issues or interests relating to Black British undergraduates or disabled undergraduates with mental health conditions.
To express your interest in working with the Awarding Gaps Consultation Team, or for more information, please contact us at agct@admin.cam.ac.uk.