Assuring student learning requires the careful use of ‘secure’ assessment types at key points in the curriculum. Secure assessment types are those for which we can have high confidence that assessment rules were followed and can verify that the student completed the task. This is in contrast to ‘open’ assessments where rules may be more easily circumvented.

Open assessment types remain critical to students’ learning and will continue to be a significant part of our assessment mix. Students who genuinely engage with these tasks can benefit greatly from the opportunities they provide to develop essential knowledge, skills and competencies. They also provide an important mechanism for staff to provide students with feedback on how their understanding is developing.

This page collates advice on secure assessment to support the implementation of the University’s assessment principles that require 50 per cent of assessment within a subject is secure, unless a programmatic approach to assessment is taken to assuring learning.

This guide will continue to evolve as new forms of secure assessment are tested and developed. Work is under way across the University to build best-practice advice and case studies that demonstrate the use of secure assessment in all disciplines.