This section presents a range of case studies from the University of Cambridge, offering insight into how different assessment formats are being adopted across diverse disciplinary contexts to support student learning. We aim to continue adding to this section to include a broader range of disciplines and examples aligned with all five assessment formats. If you would like to contribute an example from your own context, please get in touch at cctlenq@admin.cam.ac.uk.
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Coursework
History of Art: combined portfolio for first-year students
The History of Art Tripos has been assessing students on their core Part I course, The Objects of Art History, through a combined portfolio comprising a catalogue entry, an exhibition review, and a proposal for a collection display with rationale and accompanying wall text. These combined elements mirror the types of activities found in professional roles associated with the field and, equally, engage students in discipline-specific forms of content creation and analysis. In this year-long course, students are given a lot of autonomy to explore topics for the portfolio elements that are of particular interest to them.
Alongside the drive to create a more authentic assessment, successful widening participation endeavours have meant that more students now come to read History of Art who have not had previous experience of studying the subject. The assessment modes on this course, therefore, operate as a scaffolded way of developing student understanding of the discipline itself – its ways of thinking and practicing – and as a process through which students hone the skills associated with art history and its potential future professional avenues.
To support students through the assessment, they must a skills workshop (or set of workshops) associated with each element of the portfolio. These sessions introduce the format of each exercise, opening out to broader themes and questions prompted by these forms of writing. For example, utilising a neutral or more personal voice between exercise one and two, how to research using collections, or how to describe the impact of space and atmosphere on the reception of art. Alongside these workshops, students can also access a 30-minute supervision with their Director of Studies. They may share a draft of their work, though only oral feedback is given.
Furthermore, the delivery and design of the assessment support students: through both the assessment brief given to students and the careful timing of deadlines. A detailed assessment brief makes clear the parameters, scope and aims of the exercise and the purpose of the assessments in relation to their wider learning on the Tripos. Additional resources are also provided on Moodle. It is helpful for students to have examples or templates of new or unfamiliar forms of assessment: past submissions are shared, as well as examples drawn from professional contexts. This, along with the skills sessions and supervisions, where questions can be asked, works to assuage anxiety. The assessments are timed carefully to spread the deadlines alongside the other assessments on the Tripos and the dedicated skills workshops they must attend.
Staff are provided with the same information as students to guide them in supervising these assessments. Prior to implementation and for two years following, all staff attending Teaching Committees on the portfolio assessment were consulted on its limitations and value. This led to reshaping of minor elements and calibrations to the brief to allow students greater flexibility while remaining rooted in encouraging their collections- and gallery-based learning. The course convenor remains on call to answer questions about the assessment from supervisors or students, alongside the UTO Governance meetings where new colleagues can be inducted into the process of supporting these assessments.
Geography: coursework across a whole Tripos
Coursework is a component of assessment in all three years of the Geographical Tripos. This format of assessment requires students to develop and demonstrate a range of subject-specific and transferable skills associated with the discipline beyond those associated with essay writing. The skills and methods are embedded into the curriculum and taught at Part IA and IB, alongside research training for the Part II dissertation.
At Part IA, coursework – while not contributing to the final degree classification – is weighted at 20% of the class with a two-part submission of 1,000 and 1,500 words. For Part IB, students take four papers, each of which has a compulsory piece of coursework. These are limited to 2,000 words and weighted at 33.3%, contributing 30% to the final degree classification. There is greater variance at Part II, as students take four papers from a range of thirteen options: in 2024-25, there were only three without a coursework element, and one paper is entirely assessed by coursework (three pieces). The coursework word limit for Part II is 3,000. Some papers include fieldwork, and the collection of data contributes to assessed coursework.
Coursework takes a variety of forms on the Geographical Tripos, as illustrated here:
Part IA
- GIS and cartography
- Critical analysis of an object in the context of decolonising museum collections
- Data analysis and coding: introductory statistics
Part IB
- A critical report on a students’ experience of lab work and challenges associated with sample preparation and data collection
- A modelling exercise
- A proposal for a funded research project
- A policy brief for a hypothetical UN programme
- A discourse analysis and coding of different types of published material, including film, video games, news articles, artwork
- The collection of primary data on a fieldtrip and analysis of secondary data
- Multivariate data analysis and spatial statistical methods
Part II
- A strategy document assessing multi-hazard risks, including group work for formative feedback in preparation for submission of an individual report
- Data analysis, coding and interpretation applied in a variety of different geographical contexts
- An extended essay, policy critique and review, personal reflection on a geographical topic, grounded in the relevant literature
- An investigation of the geographical significance of a material object
- A recorded speech of 7-8 minutes, together with a commentary (in 2023-24 this took the form of a podcast and commentary of equivalent length)
- A geographical analysis of a physical space, currently Cambridge Crown Court; accessed through either an organised visit or archives / recorded hearings
While each paper supports students in different ways, the team have developed some common practices. These include a lecture which introduces the task and usually one or more timetabled Q&A sessions scheduled in good time for the submission date. Sometimes these are complemented by a Google Doc to which students add questions ahead of a Q&A lecture. This gives them anonymity, aimed at overcoming any anxieties they may have at asking questions publicly. For some skills, notably IA and IB statistics and coding, there are additional timetabled drop-in sessions for students needing more individual support outside of the scheduled practical classes.
It is department policy that traditional supervisions are not given in support of assessed coursework, and there are specific marking criteria for coursework separate from those for written examinations. These are published in Michaelmas Term and discussed with students so that they understand what markers are looking for. Feedback is provided on all pieces of coursework, but only at the end of the year, given the submission dates and timing of marking.
Staff have found that many students are anxious about coursework, particularly as recent reforms to A-levels mean that they often arrive with little prior experience. Providing regular support, both in person during lectures and practicals and through follow-up emails, can help to build confidence. A consistent approach to communication is also essential. To avoid confusion, it is helpful to designate a single member of staff to manage queries, and to ensure that all teaching staff, including demonstrators, refrain from offering guidance unless they are certain of the correct answer. A policy of not responding to individual student emails can help to ensure that all students receive the same information, and this can be communicated in advance to manage expectations.
Planning submission deadlines well in advance is crucial both for students and staff. Where students are completing coursework for multiple papers, it is important that deadlines are spread across the year, rather than concentrated in Easter Term. A previous approach, which relied on students self-pacing their submissions, led to significant stress when work was delayed until the last minute. Clear deadlines also support administrative planning, enabling staff to prepare Moodle submissions, distribute cover sheets, and manage marking logistics effectively. Markers benefit from clarity around timelines, particularly when submissions are staggered across terms, and should be advised early whether marking will be required during busier teaching periods or can be deferred to later in the year.
Marking criteria also require careful consideration. A consistent set of marking criteria across papers can support both student understanding and marking consistency, although some variation may be needed to reflect different task types. Geography recently introduced simplified criteria for Part IA, aiming to improve clarity for both students and staff. Consistency of feedback remains a key concern for students, particularly when coursework is marked by multiple assessors. Staff should be aware that marking coursework is time-intensive and plan accordingly.
Finally, it is important to ensure that coursework is proportionate in scope; even low-weighted tasks can lead students to spend a disproportionate amount of time on them. Tasks should be designed with realistic expectations of student time and workload. Coursework questions should be updated annually to avoid the risk of reuse, and students should be reminded about plagiarism, collusion and the appropriate use of AI when completing their assessments.
Engineering: a portfolio towards accreditation
The Part IIB Engineering Project is a year-long programme of work which accounts for 50% of the MEng year of the Engineering Tripos. The portfolio consists of and assesses the overall performance of: two presentations, an interim report, a final project report. This coursework assessment has been designed with accreditation standards in mind, which require engineering students to be able to bring together their knowledge and skills developed through their studies to solve ‘complex problems’. The project enables students to have some agency over their studies to work on an area of their choice to employ the knowledge, skills and understanding they have learned during their time on the Engineering Tripos.
Importantly, the assessment process is designed to support students with greater familiarity with traditional examinations to engage with presentations and long-form written work. At the end of Michaelmas Term, students are tasked with a formative presentation before they complete the summative presentation later on. It provides students with an opportunity to practise their presentation skills and introduce them to the task in a supportive and developmental environment. Students speak to small groups of peers to receive written feedback on their presentations – with accommodations for students with a condition or disability that impacts their ability to present, or students undertaking projects of a sensitive nature, to speak just to assessors.
The Technical Milestone Report is, equally, an opportunity to practise skills required for the final report. It also invites students to engage with key skills required for the discipline and future professions, such as project management, time planning, and setting realistic goals for the project’s success.
The department ensure that there are weekly meetings between the supervisor and the supervisee to provide continuous feedback on the development of the project. As this coursework requires students to undertake the work over a longer and sustained period of time, it is vital to keep the project on track through these regular monitoring and feedback interactions. With this in mind, students are expected to produce a GANTT chart as part of their project report, which has proven to be beneficial for students in undertaking the project – particularly those with SpLDs that affect time management – as it helps to break down the largescale project into a manageable structure across the year.
Modern & Medieval Languages: video creation
For second-year students there is a ‘Media’ course – i.e. ‘German through Media’, ‘French through Media’, etc – which is assessed through coursework. This is a component of the wider Language Paper, which is assessed by an end-of-year in-person examination that requires students to translate from English into the language being studied. The ‘Media’ course, which replaced a listening and comprehension exam in 2022, is weighted at 30% of the total paper. The overview of the course assessment presented here is from the German language; other languages may vary in their practices slightly.
For this coursework assessment, students produce a 5-7-minute video in the language they are studying, submitted in Week 4 of Easter Term. The video can be on any topic within those explored on the course – with the final decision on topic being made in conversation with their supervisor. The video content must engage critically with the chosen topic, and must include a minimum of 500 words spoken by the student. In addition to the video, the student must submit a 200-word synopsis of the content. The format of the video is not prescribed: students can choose the format that best suits their needs. The content and language are equally weighted (50% each), and it is important to stress to students that the assessors are not looking for ‘slick productions’ but for genuine critical engagement with the topic, and for clarity and coherency of expression.
The course is guided by a set of explicit learning outcomes for students. To achieve these outcomes, students receive 8 hours of course teaching time and 8 hours of supervision in total. In classes, students are able to practise discussion of authentic video clips, summaries, comprehension, work on vocabulary and grammar, pronunciation, and pro and contra debating. In addition, the classes teach and discuss the wider cultural context of the topics discussed in the video clips. Alongside the learning on this course sits the content and teaching for the language translation classes and the lecture series on topics relating to the themes explored on the ‘Media’ course: both feed into the students’ overall progression on the paper.
Students are provided with a course programme at the beginning of each term. They receive formal feedback on their written summaries, argued responses, scripts and videos by class teachers and supervisors. All supervisors are aware of the deadlines set for homework for the classes so that they can avoid clashes or bunching of deadlines. For the assessed video, students are not allowed to receive feedback from a teacher or supervisor: it must be their independent work.
There is one Moodle site for students and a separate one for staff. The latter is used to exchange teaching material and ideas for supervisions. All involved in teaching are provided with a programme for the term, templates for handouts, links to resources, and links to films. There is also help for teaching staff who are unsure about the use of technology (i.e. how to record and edit video clips). There are ‘how to’ videos but also one-to-one support available. The IT support team in the MMLL Faculty are also able to advise and help. It is worth noting that students are not all ‘digital natives’, so many of them do not have prior experience of video editing. This is nonetheless a worthwhile assessment format because, alongside the fun of teaching the course, students have the opportunity to be develop skills they may need to be able to demonstrate after graduation (e.g. presentation, free speaking, video editing). This course also provides them with the autonomy to choose a topic they are enthusiastic about and present this in a way they feel comfortable with. This has seen students who are normally reluctant to speak in front of others come out of their shell and demonstrate their presentation skills.
Natural Sciences (Pharmacology): video creation
In Part IB of the Natural Sciences Tripos, students taking the Pharmacology course are assessed by pre-recorded videos in which they must describe the pharmacological properties of a drug, chosen from a list of options. This assessment task is based on the ‘3-minute thesis’ competition, and so their videos must be 3 minutes long. The coursework task takes place across the term, where sessions have been removed from the practical class schedule to provide some of the time needed. Students are introduced to the task in a session at the start of term, which describes which aspects of the chosen drug should be the major focus of the video, and includes advice on researching their topic and how to create the video. Two examples (of contrasting styles) are provided to demonstrate that there is not a single way to format or produce the video.
In Week 4, students prepare an early draft of their video to share with lecturers – each drug on the list has a designated lecturer – for informal feedback. Students then draw on this feedback to develop their final version for submission for summative assessment later in the term. Feedback on the draft is developmental in nature and concerns what aspects of the drug the student could investigate further and broader structural considerations for the video. When submitting their final version, students can opt to allow their video to be viewed by other students after the submission deadline has passed. From experience so far, approximately half the class opts to do this. Other students can then view the videos and vote for their favourite. This gives an opportunity for students to see how other students approached the same task. The marking criteria for this task are provided to supervisors as well as examiners, and supervisors have expressed that these specific criteria have been useful in supervision discussions with students.
This has been a popular assessment task among the students. Several features help it to work well. First, the students are applying the concepts learnt in the course to a tightly focused topic. This makes it clear what is in scope. It also makes the video easier to mark. Second, there are example videos provided that show what a successful task might look like. These were recorded by two lecturers so that there were examples even in the first year of the assessment. Third, there was some course time cleared for the task. This may not be enough time for it to be fully completed – some independent study time is needed – but helped students to appreciate that this was a replacement assessment, not an addition. Fourth and finally, feedback on the draft video appears to be appreciated by students. It is important that all those providing feedback do so in a timely manner. This may make it difficult to scale the task to very large cohorts (it is working well with the c.70 students we have per year), although alternative feedback routes such as using PhD students or peer feedback might help.
In-person (invigilated) digital examinations
Natural Sciences (Plant & Microbial Sciences): promoting equitable formative student support for long-answer essays
For the Part IB paper Plant & Microbial Sciences, students are required to complete four long-form typed essays online, on lecture topics covered within the course: three topic-specific essays and one synoptic essay for which students synthesise concepts from across the course. To support students in undertaking this assessment, a range of activities are embedded into the curriculum.
In Week 2 of Michaelmas Term, practical class time is given to essay writing skills, including a talk on best practice, the ‘step up’ to Part IB, links to further resources, and a feedback sheet for essays. Across the academic year, students are provided with supervision feedback on their essays; supervisors are requested to set and mark work every week with around half of these pieces of supervision work being essays.
Additionally, there is an optional structured session on the synoptic titles in Easter Term, available to all students. This session works to make explicit the themes that run through the course and demonstrate how the connections between topics have been built. In the session, students are split into groups to formulate and plan answers to past paper synoptic essay titles. The groups then come back together to discuss their responses, which emphasises the different ways that they could approach the title and define the scope. The session is facilitated by an academic familiar with the breath of the course, which means that students get to explore these connections regardless of whether their usual weekly supervisor has that breadth of understanding or not.
Support for staff on this paper primarily focuses on supporting the supervisors who deliver formative feedback to students. Equitable support for students is a priority, so we have a supervisor coordinator in the department who collates and curates supporting resources for supervision delivery, including marking. The coordinator also checks in with students and supervisors proactively. Resources which have been created for supervisors include example marked essays (contributed with permission from past students and supervisors) – demonstrating both answers to titles but also an appropriate level of feedback annotation – guidance on how to estimate grades for supervision work, a synoptic essay advice sheet, and examples of a themes-highlighting exercise from the student session. Supervisors also have the opportunity to contact the supervisor coordinator and ask for second marking and discussion on a batch of essays to help them develop their practice in gauging a grade, and to support a constructive level of annotation / feedback on a piece. This all helps to standardise the experience of the student cohort.
Natural Sciences (Plant & Microbial Sciences): embedding formative support for the short-answer questions format throughout the curriculum
For the Part IB paper Plant & Microbial Sciences, students complete ten short-answer questions focused on the practical component of the course. These are drawn from the Experimental Science strand and include tasks such as calculations, data interpretation and evaluating experimental methods. The paper is taken online under closed-book conditions and is completed in around two hours. While answers are typed, students can also include hand-drawn diagrams where relevant.
To support students in preparing for this assessment, formative opportunities are embedded throughout the academic year in short, accessible formats. One such opportunity occurs during practical sessions. For example, during a 20-minute enzyme incubation period – which was previously unstructured downtime – students are invited to attempt a past paper question written by the lead demonstrator. Feedback is then provided directly by the demonstrators within the session. This approach has received highly positive feedback from students and is now a regular feature of the course.
In addition, an optional structured session runs in Easter Term available to all students. This session is designed to make the assessment format transparent: it introduces the different types of questions students may encounter, walks through selected examples (often drawn from past papers) and guides students through interactive group work to explore and answer them. The session concludes with a whole-cohort discussion to consolidate learning and demonstrate the different valid approaches to answering. This is led by a member of the teaching team who has broad familiarity with the course, enabling them to highlight the implicit through processes that examiners use when designing questions. Students are also provided with a curated selection of past questions with exemplar suggested answers. These exemplars are shared directly with students rather than only through supervisors, as a deliberate move towards more equitable access to support materials. This collection allows students to see a range of possible responses and understand who constitutes a strong answer.
Support is designed to be ‘little and often’, with opportunities to practise beginning as early as Week 1 of Michaelmas Term. This regular low-stakes exposure to assessment-style questions helps to demystify the format and build confidence incrementally across the diverse content areas of the course. The strategy also aligns with broader departmental aims of embedding authentic, formative experiences into the curriculum in sustainable and scalable ways.
Staff are provided with the same exemplar materials and are encouraged to incorporate these into their supervisions. Drawing from existing past paper questions has reduced workload for both academic and practical teaching teams, while increasing the quality of feedback students receive. The success of this approach has been recognised at the Course Management Committee and is being shared more widely across the department.
Presentations
Psychology: three short presentations
Presentations are used as an assessment format in the Psychological & Behavioural Sciences Tripos for the paper Advanced Topics in Social and Applied Psychology. There are three for this paper, each consisting of an 8-minute presentation followed by a 5-minute question and answer session. The students must take responsibility for developing three presentations. At the start of term, they are provided with a range of potential questions to respond to in their presentations and must select one from each of the three separate lecture blocks across the paper. The presentations are scheduled to take place at the start of Easter Term, before the main exam period.
At the start of Michaelmas, a short introductory video about the presentation assessment is uploaded to Moodle alongside all necessary details on this paper’s assessment. In Lent, a detailed guide to the presentation assessment is provided, which gives practical advice about all elements and what to expect. The marking criteria are also provided at this point to ensure clarity for each criterion. The supervisions for this paper support students through providing opportunities for them to practise giving their presentations and receiving feedback. Finally, the final lecture of one of the modules is also allocated for students to practice giving their presentations, now in a large-group setting.
To support supervisors in their role supporting students, the department provides a training session to calibrate expectations, explore the marking criteria, and discuss the presentation format requirements. This is further accompanied by a separate video outlining the expectations of the presentation assessment. Importantly, the team facilitate a discussion amongst the assessors to consider the evidence regarding implicit biases that are evident at the population level, but also asking assessors to reflect on what implicit biases they might bring to the assessment.
This format of assessment is administered by the department directly, which gives greater control over the assessment but does have administrative consequences for the department. This increased control enables greater choice over the assessment timetable and room booking; we select rooms with separate entrances and exits to help with the flow of students on the day. Students do not give their three presentations back-to-back but are instead given a mix of days and, where possible, times of day (morning, afternoon and evening). The team make a separate accessible version of the timetable which is screen reader-friendly for those students who need this.
We advise colleagues interested in this format of assessment to be mindful of how the presentations are recorded for moderation purposes (video segments rather than an entire day makes it easier to find individual presentations) and the examination adjustments application process timings (as these can be different from examinations).