Reconfiguring Assessment: Co-Creation and Equality in Higher Education

Rethinking assessment as a site of power and participation

This project explores how assessment in higher education can be reimagined as a collaborative, participatory and democratic practice. Moving beyond conventional models in which assessment is designed and controlled by educators, the research investigates how students and staff can work together as partners in shaping assessment processes, forms and criteria.

Grounded in critical and poststructural perspectives, particularly the work of Jacques Rancière, the project examines assessment as a site where power circulates structuring what counts as valid knowledge, who is authorised to speak and how learning is recognised. Drawing on the concept of the ‘distribution of the sensible’, it interrogates how traditional assessment practices reproduce hierarchical relations and how co-creation can disrupt these arrangements by redistributing authority and voice within the classroom.

 

Co-creation in practice: postgraduate education and partnership

Empirically, the project is situated within the MA TESOL programme in the Department of International Education, where students are positioned as active partners in assessment design and evaluation. Students participate as co-creators of assessment tasks developing questions, selecting formats of response and as co-assessors, contributing to peer evaluation alongside academic judgement.

Using a qualitative, practice-based approach, the study draws on interviews, surveys and classroom-based observations to examine how these shifts are experienced by both students and educators. The research captures how roles, responsibilities and expectations are negotiated in real time, and how participation in assessment reshapes students’ engagement, agency and understanding of learning. The project contributes to ongoing debates on student voice, partnership and democratic education by offering both a conceptual and practice-informed account of co-created assessment. It demonstrates how assessment can move beyond measurement to become a space for dialogue, shared responsibility and critical engagement. Ultimately, the research positions assessment as a site for reconfiguring relationships and redistributing authority, opening up new possibilities for participation and meaning-making in higher education.