From anxiety to agency: enhancing student confidence and engagement with assessments via the SkillSense Programme

Assessment literacy—the ability to understand academic expectations, interpret marking criteria, and apply feedback—is crucial for student achievement. However, many students struggle with these elements of academic assessment as they lack confidence in understanding assessment criteria, structuring assignments, and interpreting feedback. This means that University assessments in the UK can be a major source of anxiety for many students. These difficulties can impact student engagement, self-efficacy, and overall academic achievement. This paper presents the ‘SkillSense for Assessment Mastery (SSAM) Programme’, an initiative designed for undergraduate and international post graduate students in higher education. The SkillSense Programme was developed to address assessment fears by teaching assessment literacy in an interactive, student-centred way. In doing so, it improves student confidence, self-efficacy, and sense of belonging to the academic community. To evaluate student perspectives and measure the impact of the SkillSense Programme, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected at a UK Higher Education Institution. This study analyses pre-survey (n = 83) and post-survey (n = 45) responses as well as focus group discussions (n = 16) taken from an undergraduate student cohort who participated in the SkillSense Programme in October 2024 (n = 85). The paper examines students’ academic assessment concerns, their understanding of assessment criteria, and their overall academic self-efficacy. The findings indicate that the SkillSense Programme enhanced students’ ability to interpret assessment briefs, apply marking criteria and academic skills, and engage with academic writing conventions (e.g. 98% noted enhanced understanding of academic writing, terminology, and key assessment elements, such as marking criteria, marking rubrics, and learning outcomes). The intervention also fostered a greater sense of belonging and academic identity for 91% of the students.