Standardisation to personalisation: designing better assessment futures
Improving support for personalised assessment can make a difference in student satisfaction. But achieving this requires a commitment from edtech providers to adopt digital interoperability standards. During a session, held in partnership with CoSector, at the 2026 THE Digital Universities UK event, a panel of experts spoke about how institutions must work together to shape technological solutions that respond to the needs of institutions and students.
Assessments are increasingly personalised, said Mark Stubbs, assistant director of customer success at CoSector – University of London. “This sits at that interesting nexus point of pedagogy, administrative efficiency, technology and the ability to bring together a triangle of registry, educational specialists and IT,” said Stubbs. Managing learner and staff workloads and enabling people to use the right tools are key, he added.
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in the UK has successfully brought these together to deliver the best experience for staff and students. James Trueman, academic lead for academic systems and assessment at ARU, explained how the university has connected its learning management platform and student records to create an integrated, data-driven system.
The system uses a red-amber-green notification system to send reminders and nudges to students regarding their assessments. Different digital tools are plugged in as directed by the needs of the modules and learners. If students need adjustments or extensions, it is processed in the background without the need for human intervention. This frees up staff time for more impactful tasks such as providing pedagogical support to students, Trueman said.
ARU has also implemented a tool to enable module leaders to allocate markers, moderators and external examiners. “It takes the stress out of the management of that experience,” Trueman said. At the end of the process, grades move from the learning management platform to the student information system, saving time and improving efficiency. “In the first couple of years, the automation part of it saved more than 100,000 administrative hours,” Trueman said, adding that the university’s new grading management tool could improve this further.
Patrick Gannon, director of assessment management at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in the UK, spoke about the merits of a centralised digital ecosystem. While coordinating the university’s exam delivery, Gannon’s team focused on customising the student experience. “To personalise, you have to standardise,” he said. At the start of the project, there was no single place where students could see submission deadlines and when to expect feedback.
“Once we could control this as a standard experience, we were able to show individualised deadlines based on student needs,” he said. This also enabled MMU to adopt a service management approach to ensuring that issues are resolved quickly and with clarity. The resulting online learning environment offers same-day answers to requests that previously took weeks to process, reducing waiting times and students’ stress around issues such as extension requests. The initiative’s success is reflected in MMU’s National Student Survey scores on assessment and feedback.
There is always more to be done in streamlining modern assessment design and support, and this requires collaboration across the sector, said Trueman, who encouraged universities to join working groups to push progress forward.
The panel:
- Patrick Gannon, director of assessment management, Manchester Metropolitan University
- Mark Stubbs, assistant director of customer success, CoSector – University of London
- James Trueman, academic lead for academic systems and assessment, Anglia Ruskin University
Find out more about CoSector – University of London.
