Digital Assessment (Formerly EMA)

Digital Assessment (formerly Electronic Management of Assessment) comprises a number of elements:

• electronic submission of work
• authenticity checking
• on-screen marking
• online feedback
• electronic archiving

Note: these aspects of digital assessment are not mutually dependent. See the Learning Platform Suite pages for more information on the tools we support for each.  

Policy and procedures

The Marking Procedures document sets out electronic submission requirements, managing submission to the wrong place, action in the event of an outage of a supported digital assessment system and refers also to the list of supported digital assessment systems on this page. 

See also the Anonymous Marking page for policy and guidance relating to digital submission, marking and feedback anonymously.

Supported digital assessment Systems 

Deciding which system to use:

• always use Turnitin where you have one word-processed or presentation based file per assessment of up to 100MB, to enable similarity checking as well as anonymous marking (where applies)
• only use the Blackboard Assignment manager for file-based submission when you can’t use Turnitin, for example where you have multiple files per assessment and/or files larger than 100MB; combine with use of ReCap for media files
• use PebblePad to scaffold multiple writing tasks, particularly reflection, and/or files need combining into a single coherent piece of work (e.g. portfolio and workbook-based assessments) and/or to be able to see learners’ work in progress and provide formative feedback.

Turnitin, PebblePad, Blackboard and ReCap are all centrally supported, core University systems.  For staff development, training and advice, contact your Digital Academic Developer.  For technical support, contact the IT Service Desk.  The staff TEL Knowledge Base and the student TEL Knowledge Base contain extensive guidance and advice on using these systems, including quick videos, top tips and links to further support.

Please note: the supported digital assessment systems on the list above have been tested to ensure they are robust and meet our assessment workflow and quality assurance requirements, thus are fully supported.   Using other systems for digital assessment, including centrally supported systems not on the list of above (e.g. Teams, Padlet), as well as external systems (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms**), are not fully supported and therefore carry risk.  Contact your Digital Academic Developer for advice.

**see our Learning & Teaching guidelines within the Social Media Policy for advice on risk management 

Health and Safety

If you are reading work submitted electronically on-screen and/or providing feedback online please see the advice on using display screen equipment on the CCCU Health and Safety pages. Note: there is specific guidance on use of mobile devices (where not within the main text of the page this may be attached on the right-hand side of the page).

Frequently asked questions