6. Assessment competence

TU Delft requires academic staff members (UFO profiles: teacher, assistant professor, associate professor, full professor) with a task in education and an appointment of more than 0.2 FTE to have or acquire a UTQ qualification within three years after employment at TU Delft³³, or apply for UTQ exemption based on UTQ equivalency⁴³. The applicable vacancies mention this. For employees in the academic career track (ACT), obtaining the UTQ is part of the assessment criteria for getting promoted to assistant professor 1 (UD1) and beyond³³. Every employee of the TU Delft is entitled to two days per year for further development^44,45, which enables them to follow assessment specific training opportunities. Following the collective labour agreement, junior lecturers (teacher 3 and teacher 4), lecturers, postdocs, and PhDs will be provided with time to complete their teaching qualification. For lecturers, this qualification is the UTQ. A granted UTQ exemption based on established UTQ equivalence is equivalent to the UTQ, but that does result in a UTQ certificate⁴³.

For associate and full professors, assessment (‘testing’) is explicitly mentioned in the TU Delft ‘guidance document on career paths with an emphasis on teaching’⁴⁶ as an example). This document also mentions Didactic Leadership Courses as training opportunity for associate and full professors. Finally, ‘testing’ is a separate ‘result area’^mmm in the UNLⁿⁿⁿ function description for teachers, assistant professors, and associate professors^47-49.

The content of UTQ module ASSESS is the heart of the assessment competence of the TU Delft and is in line with TU Delft assessment conditions and the nine requirements (see 1.2). Being one of the four mandatory modules of the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ^ooo), it focusses on assessment. Its learning objectives form the core competences for employees who are either responsible for course assessment, for giving assessment advice, for giving assessment training to lecturers, or for assessment quality assurance. They are in line with the 4TU UTQ competences⁵¹. The TU Delft assessment manual^16,ppp and the contained guidelines form the common knowledge base on assessment within the TU Delft.

The learning objectives of UTQ ASSESS⁵² are:

1. Design an assessment plan for a course.
2. Analyse assessment results to improve education in a course:
   1. Investigate learning objective achievement.
   2. Identify areas for improvement in assessment items, grade calculations, teaching, and course material.
3. Develop different types of assessments, including blueprints, instructions, grading guides and the grade calculation.
4. Evaluate the quality of assessments, based on the quality requirements for assessment.

A training ‘senior examination qualification’ (SEQ) is available for assessment/educational advisors, and for lecturers/educational management with an assessment task on programme level.

In addition to the handbook for boards of examiners⁵³, the policy department of ESA, Legal Affairs, and TLS offers (new) members of boards of examiners (BoEx) an introductory course that focusses both on their roles and responsibilities, as well as refreshes the principles of UTQ ASSESS and this assessment framework.

PhD students can follow Graduate School courses on supervision and assessment, as well as on teaching fundamentals like constructive alignment:

• T3.A1 Foundations of Educational Design⁵⁴
• T3.A3 Assessing students and master thesis projects⁵⁵
• T3.B1 Coaching Individual Students and Project Groups⁵⁶

Other assessors and supervisors without a teaching position and therefore without UTQ obligation (e.g. postdocs, researchers and lecturers with an appointment of <=0.2 FTE) can follow the course “Supervision and Assessment Principles”⁵⁷ (SAP) that focuses on supervising and assessing individual projects.

TLS offers trainings for student assistants (SAs)⁵⁸ in the faculties on how to supervise, provide feedback and assess students (i.e. basic didactics) in e.g. computer labs. In addition, a self-paced training is available for SAs who assist the examiner in developing and monitoring the technical side of digital exams, and prepares them for advising lecturers on tool use. Faculties can require their student assistants (SAs) to follow these trainings.

TLS offers training for the TU Delft student council and for faculty student councils on education and assessment, to make them familiar with constructive alignment, the TU Delft assessment values, the assessment requirements, and organisation. The trainings help them to influence assessment policy in a meaningful way.

Next to the beforementioned UTQ module ASSESS, TLS offers various training opportunities to assessment stakeholders. Examples of topics of Continuing Professional Development⁵⁹ (CPD) courses, workshops, short courses, videos are:

• Using test result analysis to improve courses
• Creating (and improving) rubrics⁶⁰
• Optimal use of assessment tools
• Fraud prevention and detection in remote assessment

The TU Delft offers a Leadership in Education Course^qqq by the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Education and Learning⁶¹. Participants can decide to work on assessment-related topics as well.

Boards of examiners draw up qualification requirements for the appointment of examiners in the Rules and Guidelines²² (see 3.12), which includes at least a UTQ. Other types of assessors who are not appointed as examiner can be involved in the assessment of courses/education under supervision of the responsible examiner.

In addition to the UTQ requirement for examiners, boards of examiners can determine prerequisites for specific important assessment tasks that examiners, assessors, or other teaching staff conduct to secure their competence (Quality requirement 9). These tasks include assessing graduation work, assessing projects, reviewing student work as student assistants, drawing up exam questions as PhD students, etc.

Examples of additional requirements for specific tasks are:

• UTQ status: to have completed the UTQ or to be working on the UTQ
• Other qualifications / training: to have completed or attended specific task oriented training, e.g. for scientific staff without UTQ obligation (PhD students, researchers and parttime lecturers with an appointment of 0.2 FTE or less)
• Position: to be part of the academic teaching staff (or even hold a specific position like teacher 2) of a specific programme or track
• Affiliation: to be or not to be part of the department in which a student project takes place

Boards of examiners can assure the quality of the assessment of graduation projects by setting requirements on the size and requirements for composition and membership of the graduation committees (see above for examples^rrr).

The departments ensure that they provide their new employees with assessment tasks with at least the following documents/information:

• Education related regulations
• Graduation manual
• University Teaching Qualification (in case the employee is not qualified yet)
• Overview of educational procedures and processes like exams, graduation, and (re)designing courses (including advise and approval procedures of BoS, BoEx and FSC).
• Overview of available training, events, and support on assessment
• Overview of teaching and assessment related tools (e.g. Osiris, the LMS (Brightspace) and Coursebase).
• Overview of educational management and support organisation in the faculty and within the TU Delft

The previously listed information for new employees should be easily accessible to all employees.

Teaching and Learning Services provides information on teaching and related tooling via https://teaching-support.tudelft.nl/⁶². Table 5 gives an overview of what assessment information is currently published where.

On-the-job advice and support by assessment advisors is another way of increasing assessment competence of lecturers. Both in the faculties as well as in TLS, support staff and assessment experts are available for support and advice on assessment.

The assessment support staff gathers in Focus on Assessment (FoA) meetings that focus on low-threshold peer advice and exchange of information, increasing the members’ assessment competence, and escalating TU wide issues to the Assessment Taskforce (AT).