What is SASAL?

Student-led Assessment for Sustainable Autonomous Learning (SASAL) is an exciting new initiative designed to encourage and support colleagues to engage in student-led assessment practices within their modules and programmes. It reimagines assessment as a variety of practices that actively involves students and embraces assessment as a site for the development of the attitudes, competencies, and experience that will enable our students to become effective autonomous learners, throughout and beyond their time at university. Instead of assessment being something ‘done to’ students, SASAL explores how they can play a central role in designing, shaping, and evaluating their own learning.

Why is this valuable?

Traditional assessment often focuses on grades over growth, reinforcing passivity and one-size-fits-all measures of success. SASAL is a positive initiative that will support colleagues to:

• Move beyond assessment as a measure of performance toward a process of learning
• Foster autonomy, deep critical reflection, and meaningful personally relevant study
• Challenge rigid, settled, educator-led models
• Support student well-being, retention, and heterogeneity in assessment

How can you get involved?

This fully voluntary, structured, and supported initiative invites module leaders to explore new approaches through a three-phase process:

1. Discussion & Planning (Late 2025) – Explore student-led assessment in dialogue with colleagues
2. Change Initiative (Trimester 1, 2025-26) – Trial supported changes in your modules
3. Reflection & Development (early 2026) – Evaluate, refine, and consider next steps

This is not about abandoning assessment, nor is it about devaluing expertise. Rather, it’s about critically interrogating how we can co-construct assessment with students to ensure that it is meaningful, relevant, and transformative.

This will not involve massive time-consuming rewrites or extra admin burden. Just a real opportunity to transform assessment into a powerful learning tool that benefits both students and educators.

Interested? Questions? Contact Professor Zack Moir at z.moir@napier.ac.uk to learn more or sign up.

For a more detailed discussion of the initiative, please see Zack’s overview video.