Reflections on 'the complexity of assessment in action'

Isabelle Stevens is a recent Psychology Graduate (pictured second from left, above) who worked on an internship with The Assessment Network at Cambridge in 2025. Here she reflects on the projects she worked on, and how immersing herself in the world of assessment made her reconsider her assessment ‘identity’.

Before interning at The Assessment Network at Cambridge, I held the ‘classic’ student's perspective on assessment. For me, assessments were all about exams. A key part of my 19 years in education and one that I never fully understood the complexity of until working at Cambridge. I viewed them as a tool used by teachers and lecturers to inject pure horror into their students! A tool with the sole purpose of testing my memory and producing a mark at the end. Unsurprisingly, this perspective is far from accurate. Assessment is so much more than just an exam. The long pipeline of development, ensuring they’re inclusive, accessible, valid and reliable, is something I completely overlooked. Assessment is not just the exam in front of a student in an exam hall; it represents a whole cycle of work. From the design and development of qualifications and quality assurance to marking and maintaining standards, there is so much involved in the process before the exam paper is put in front of me. Stepping into the internship, I quickly began to see the complexity of assessment in action. I joined the team as a Marketing and Communications Intern, working on projects that ranged from producing a video series for social media and the website to engaging with members through interviews for a ‘Member Spotlight feature’. Each project allowed me to not only develop practical skills in project management, communication and content creation, but also to witness first-hand the intricacies of assessment development and reform.

Comments (0)