Capstone assessments: why they were introduced and how to get involved in evaluation

In the summer of 2020, UCL moved all planned first-year assessments to a single capstone assignment as an emergency response to the national lockdown resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This was done to alleviate stress for students and staff and to avoid overloading online platforms.  

How they worked  

Capstone assessments aimed to allow students to synthesize their learning and demonstrate in a single piece of assessment how they had achieved the intended learning outcomes for their programme of study. 

The choice to assess first-year students with a single capstone assessment was a unique response in the sector and fairly innovative in its own right. We are keen to explore the experiences of staff and students involved in them. 

What we learned: share your experience  

We are looking to interview colleagues who were involved in any stage of the capstone assessment, such as: 

• setting it
• marking it
• giving feedback to students

The interviews will be semi-structured and take between 30 and 45 minutes, and we hope to finish the data collection by the end of term 2.
We will be as flexible as possible when offering time slots to colleagues who are interested in participating.