On 19 September 2025, educators, researchers and practitioners across Australasia gathered online for the inaugural Australasian Symposium on Programmatic Approaches to Assessment. Hosted by the ASCILITE Transforming Assessment SIG and the HERDSA Assessment Quality SIG, the symposium was alive with presentations, case studies, and a buzzing chat stream that often took discussions in new directions.

Setting the scene

The opening session framed the day by asking not just what is programmatic assessment (PA)? But how do we think programmatically? Priya Khanna (UNSW) spoke about the “polyjargon crisis”, the confusion between terms like programmatic assessment, program-level assessment, and assessment for learning, while stressing the goal is to “raise the bar of what human learners can do.” Jacob Pearce (ACER) traced the history of PA and associated assessment datapoints to “pixels” that only make sense when viewed together.

Nicholas Charlton (Griffith University) and Richard Newsham-West (The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists) then took up the program-level perspective: a holistic approach to sequencing assessments across a degree. They emphasised alignment of graduate, program, and course outcomes, distinguishing PA’s focus on learner progression from program-level assessment’s concern with curriculum coherence.

Chat reflections captured the complexity: “Every learning moment does not need to be assessed, but every assessment moment should have a learning element.”

Institutional perspectives

Session two highlighted large-scale change. UNSW’s Gary Velan and Diana Saragi Turnip shared their institutional roadmap, positioning program-level assessment as the baseline for curriculum transformation by 2028. “It’s not a straight line. it’s a scaffold,” they noted.

At Monash, Tim Fawns described the Programmatic Assessment and AI Review (PAAIR) as “building the plane while flying it.” Janica Jamieson added nuance from the Monash–ECU evaluation, where one participant captured the challenge: “you’ve got to start with a core concept… there’s no one who’s really done this before.”

The chat reinforced the importance of culture change: “the day of individual academics making assessment choices in a little silo… needs to end.”

Stories from the disciplines

The afternoon’s faculty and school-level case studies gave texture to what implementation looks like on the ground.

• Medicine: Kellie Charles and Stuart Lane (University of Sydney) described PA as “an amazing recipe” that requires multiple elements to work in harmony. one participant echoed, “Process over product is important. That is where real learning should be occurring.”
• Allied health: Melissa Oxley (Deakin) and Anthea Cochrane (Melbourne) explored workplace-based assessment portfolios and optometry capstone portfolios, raising questions about scalability and early identification of struggling students.
• Business: Sue Hickton and Jaime Yong (ECU) showed how staged performance standards and progression pathways are being embedded across complex programs, described in the chat as wrestling with a “giant flying spaghetti monster.”
• Art, design & architecture: Mark Ian Jones (UNSW) reflected on aligning creative disciplines with program-level frameworks while preserving authenticity.
• Science: Hayley Bugeja (Melbourne) highlighted the challenge of aligning 46 majors, sparking chat reflections on the need for a shared glossary to ensure consistency across staff and students
• Rethinking validity: Hora Hedayati closed with a reframing of validity, urging a move from single-instrument measures to “systems of assessment.”

As one participant summed it up in the chat: “Today’s lesson: we are not alone out here.”

Threads that tied the day together

Across sessions and conversations, some themes stood out:

• Coherence and authenticity can work together when intentionally designed
• Language and underlying narratives matters — glossaries, shared concepts, and consistent framing support cultural change
• PA and Program-Level Assessment are not binaries but interconnected dimensions: one learner-focused, the other program-focused
• Validity, reliability, and relevance must be seen as collective properties of a system, not of single instruments
• Culture is the real challenge: “cultural change is needed… because it is still silo-based thinking, atomic assessment, ownership of courses and assessment.”

Looking ahead

The symposium ended with optimism and appetite for more. Participants were already talking about revisiting progress next year: “I want to see next year how everyone has progressed from what everyone is planning at this stage.”

In the meantime, we warmly invite you to join the HERDSA Assessment Quality SIG on LinkedIn for continuing these conversations, sharing practice, and connecting with colleagues across the sector.

Final reflections

If one thread captured the mood of the day, it was the recognition that this work is collective. As one participant put it: “wicked problems tackled together make solutions feel achievable.”

The Australasian Symposium showed that programmatic approaches are not a neat model to be “rolled out” but an evolving conversation across disciplines, institutions and sectors. and that conversation — lively, contested, collaborative — has only just begun.

Catch up and keep learning

Missed the symposium or want to revisit the sessions?

Recordings, slides, and chat logs are all available via the 19 September 2025: Australasian Symposium on Programmatic Approaches to Assessment | Transforming Assessment