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Learning and
Teaching Services (LTS)
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Inclusive Assessment

In the Learner-Centered Assessments Learning Module, we explored the ways in which your teaching and learning perspectives influence assessment design and thus individual student learning, and ultimately their sense of belonging. We began the conversation about the ways your assessments can center the learner: through transparency, co-creation, and alignment. This module continues these explorations, through a focus on approaches that aim to remove barriers to student access. In this module, we aim to support you in designing assessments in a way that everyone—regardless of background, ability, or intersecting aspects of identity—can fully participate.

Although you are welcome to engage with the module on Learner-Centered Assessments and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) before or after this module on Inclusive Assessment, we have designed both modules to stand on their own.

To design inclusive assessments, we can draw on principles from Universal Design for Learning (UDL), anti-racist pedagogy, trauma-informed pedagogy, Indigenous ways of knowing, and culturally responsive teaching, among others. These orientations and frameworks help create assessments that are respectful of diverse ways of knowing, doing, and demonstrating understanding and offer students an opportunity to succeed on their own terms.

In this module, we do not focus on a single framework for inclusive assessments; instead, our focus is on emphasizing principles in practice that you can integrate in your classes in support of a strength-based approach.

Time Commitment 1–2 hours
Audience Faculty
Format 5 lessons
Pace Learner-led
Start Module

Learning Outcomes

After successfully completing this module, you will be able to:

  • Apply basic principles of IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility) as they are conceptualized at Algonquin College, in the context of curriculum, teaching and learning.
  • Enhance your assessments to ensure strength-based education, flexibility, accessibility, and learner-centeredness.
  • Embed culturally responsive pedagogies into your assessments to validate and incorporate diverse knowledges, perspectives, and identities.
  • Design Indigenous-informed assessments that integrate relationality, reciprocity, storytelling, and land-based learning.

How to work through this module

  • This is a self-directed module. You can move forward and backward through the lesson pages.
  • Complete any optional self-assessments if they appeal to you.