Refreshing our institution’s Generic Assessment Descriptors

This paper describes how and why we refreshed our Generic Assessment Descriptors (GAD) at York St John University. Focusing this paper on the most meaningful changes, these included; removing subjective terms; rewriting descriptors for collaboration to focus on positive behaviours; broadening our scope of communication to allow for a range of modes of communication while enhancing the focus on audience and media; and an overall review of the accessibility of the language, terms, and expectations (Dawson, 2021; Gonsalves, 2023; Gonsalves and Pearson, 2023). For our colleagues, we refreshed the GAD to encourage and enable them to design learning that is active, inclusive, and allows for assessments to be open for students to follow their passion and intrinsic motivations. Using a Competency-Based Education (QAA, 2023) approach put the expectations into terms of what the students must demonstrate. Removing deficit language from the descriptors focused assessment (and learning) towards celebrating the achievements of students, and not the expectations of the assessor. The refreshed GAD was beta tested by early adopters in 2023-24 and was rolled out across the University in academic year 2024-25. Feedback from the early adopters included a better use of the full range of marks and students commenting that they felt more positive about the feedback they have been receiving.