Scaffolding learning and supporting students: How Cadmus is strengthening assessment literacy at Queen Mary

Creating structure: how Cadmus supports learning

For Michele, one of Cadmus’ strengths lies in the scaffolding it provides for coursework.

Many students struggle most with getting started: how to structure an essay, how to begin a lab report, or how to break an assessment into manageable steps. Cadmus offers a framework they can build on:

“Cadmus gives us a really nice structure that we can hang things on,” Michele said. “[It provides] a checklist we can modify to suit the tasks we’re doing, and some students like to use the task list”.

^{Figure 1:Image of the templates that Cadmus offers as a starting point}

 

For students who struggle with time management, Cadmus can also present guidance about where they should be in the process. Early on the team experimented with graded checkpoints, but these quickly began to feel like “deadline overload”, particularly for part-time students balancing full-time jobs. Now, the scaffolding is lighter touch, designed to encourage independence rather than constant nudging.

The platform’s analytics provide an additional layer of support. Staff can see when a student hasn’t started at all—or when someone has spent an unhealthy amount of time on a single assignment.

As Michele noted, it provides the opportunity to “support those students who need it, who might have slipped under the net”.

Sometimes that means a personal email, other times, it prompts a tweak to the assessment brief itself. Over three years, one major assignment has been iterated upon and refined in response to the insights Cadmus provides, making expectations clearer and the workload more realistic.

Assessment, integrity and innovation

A key focus for Michele’s team is ensuring that students feel supported and confident before they encounter any high-stakes assessments. To achieve this, they use Cadmus not just as an exam platform, but as a structured, supportive environment that helps students learn the expectations of academic writing and integrity in a practical, low-pressure way.

One of the most effective elements is a short, low-stakes onboarding task introduced early in the module. In just ten minutes, students read a short article, upload a short response, and see firsthand how Cadmus and Turnitin flag quotations or missing references. This brief activity gives them a chance to experiment, make mistakes and understand what staff can see—long before they face their first real deadline: “They have a chance to feel confident in it, but without taking too much of their time,” Michele explained.

This early familiarisation helps reduce the anxiety that often surrounds academic integrity, particularly for students returning to study after time away. It also gives staff valuable insight into any technical or access issues—such as workplace firewalls for part-time students—while there is still time to resolve them.

Cadmus also supports learners during exams by offering a stable, predictable environment. Continuous autosave, visible word counts, offline functionality, clear countdowns during timed assessments, and simple extra-time adjustments mean students can focus on demonstrating their knowledge rather than worrying about technical mishaps or last-minute uploads. For remote learners, the platform allows exams to be sat off-campus with approved invigilators, giving working professionals the flexibility they need without compromising fairness.

The programme team is beginning to explore how Cadmus can support group work too, using shared digital spaces to help students collaborate more easily and to give educators a clearer sense of how groups are progressing. Longer term, Michele hopes to develop a more programmatic approach to scaffolding, looking at how assessment skills flow through and between assessment instances in different modules.

Across all of this, the aim is the same: to scaffold students’ learning in ways that build confidence, clarity and independence, enabling them to succeed whether they’re writing their first lab report or completing a high-stakes exam.

Navigating challenges and sharing practice

Michele noted that one of the biggest concerns students had when first introduced to Cadmus was around data collection, but this eased once they understood what was being collected and why. Similarly, students initially resisted working outside Word. However, the similarity of the interface tends to win them over.

For colleagues considering Cadmus, Michele’s advice was simple: talk to people who are already using it: “QM Plus has its own little quirks, so does Cadmus, and [talking to others is] better than trying to fight on your own.”

As Michele and her team continue refining their scaffolding, onboarding and support practices, Cadmus is becoming an integral part of that support. It is part of a wider shift towards assessment that is transparent, authentic, supportive and genuinely developmental. Giving every student, whatever their background, a fairer chance to shine.