Opinion
I read Phillip Dawsons’s recent article, ‘We need assured assessment, but do we need Assured AssessmentTM?’, with interest and appreciation. His ‘red pen uncapped’ approach reinforces the work behind the Assured Assessment Standard and its certification tests. This includes the development work at UTAS, Proudly Human’s discerning input, and testing with peers and international experts to hone it.
As Dawson found, the Standard and its certification tests hold up to scrutiny, and importantly they provide space for different approaches to assessment across our awards. As Tasmania’s only university, UTAS offers a broad range of awards on-campus and online, and we are highly accessible. Our mission drives us to engage with the hard work in the pre-degree space. We needed the Standard to work across all of this, with no exceptions or asterisks.
The Threshold Standards require assessment capable of confirming that all course learning outcomes are achieved by every student. However, the power, availability and ease of use of generative AI continue to pose an integrity challenge across the sector.
Like many peers, UTAS established an action plan in 2024, provided guidance to staff, and adopted the University of Sydney’s Two-Lane approach in 2025. While providing an excellent foundation, on its own it wasn’t sharp enough to answer the questions our design teams were asking across the breadth of our portfolio. How much Lane 1 do we need? How many Key Assessment Tasks? How does it work for online pre-degree programs and post-graduate diplomas? What about general degrees consisting of majors and electives? How do we deal with nested and exit awards? How do we keep the assessment model authentic, valid and relevant? How do we explain this to students, concerned communities and employers, some of whom don’t trust us?
When Proudly Human came to us with the idea of an Assured Assessment Standard, we engaged with the idea strongly and worked with them to develop it. We saw that meeting the requirements of an external standard would sharpen and clarify our approach, providing value for our staff, our students and their future employers.
The Standard isn’t something that Proudly Human developed on its own and is seeking to impose on the sector.
It was developed here at UTAS with their input. We chose to approve and adopt it ourselves before offering it openly to the sector. Our UTAS Academic Senate approved it in September and we are already using it as an approval requirement.
Dawson asks two questions. Can we expect academic governance to do its job? And do we need an external certification body?
The answer to both is ‘yes’.
As Dawson notes, the Standard’s tests of coverage and sufficiency, and its definition of secured conditions, are implied by the Threshold Standards. We agree that ‘no exceptions’ is vital, because it forces consideration of credit provisions, reasonable adjustments and course rules. We made this a certification test so the assessment model has no loopholes. These are the operational details the Standard helps providers address.
We also agree that approval bodies know what is required. The fundamental problem is that knowing what is required and being able to operationalise it at scale in a world of organisational complexity are entirely different things.
The Standard doesn’t seek to replace good academic governance. We designed it from our real-world experience at UTAS to operationalise the Threshold Standards. It gives approval committees evidence that the assessment model will ensure that every student personally demonstrates the learning outcomes of the award. Critically, the same evidence supports external audit, strengthening the confidence of students, employers and communities in the validity of the awards we issue.
This isn’t a new idea. We already do this with professional accreditation. In many disciplines external accreditation sits alongside the Threshold Standards to raise the bar, focus on particular aspects or cover things that are missing. Those of us who manage award portfolios know that we sometimes see a dual economy, with different approaches in professionally accredited and non-accredited courses, even though all meet internal threshold requirements.
While we might not like to admit it, professional accreditation works. It sharpens our focus beyond the thresholds and maintains public trust and safety. Recognising this, we sometimes seek accreditation even when we don’t have to. At UTAS, for example, we sought accreditation of our globally leading Dementia Care awards with Alzheimer’s Disease International. We chose to do this because we believed it would add value to an already high-quality program.
In some parts of the world (e.g. the United States) there is no single national regulator like TEQSA. There, accreditation bodies and their standards drive practice within a decentralised, market-driven system. In that global context, adopting an external standard would reflect well on Australian higher education.
From a public perspective, TEQSA compliance isn’t tangible. We know what it means, but to concerned parents and students weighing the value of a university award, it can sound like we mark our own homework, and have it checked only once every 7 years.
This is the critical point: Universities can and should be trusted, but the prevalence of generative AI use has undermined the foundations of community trust in our awards. A certification mark on the testamur, backed by external audit, is a rigorous and visible signal that the award can be trusted.
We are glad that the Standard and its tests have passed Dawson’s ‘red pen uncapped’ test. We can all agree that we need to find approaches that ensure every graduate personally earns their degree. We need to challenge ourselves to get this right quickly and visibly, because any university that doesn’t will undermine trust in us all. A robust external assurance process that employers and communities can see is a good way to show that we have.
Declaration
AI played no role in writing this article.
Professor Luke Bereznicki, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching Performance), University of Tasmania