How curriculum and assessment design generate credible evidence of learning.

This six-episode season of The Thought Bubble explores how higher education can credibly assure learning in an AI-enabled world. Drawing on OES’s Connected Assurance Framework, the series brings together academic leaders, learning designers and policy experts to examine how learning is designed, supported and evidenced over time. Focused on quality, equity and trust, it offers a practical, sector-facing conversation on building defensible evidence of student capability.

Episode 3 explores how curriculum and assessment design function as the foundation of assurance.

Hosted by Amanda Ford (Associate Director of Gen AI, OES), this episode features OES' Dr Lucy Elliott, Jesse Keenan and David Robertson, who bring practical experience in learning design and program architecture.

The conversation focuses on how well-designed programs generate defensible evidence of learning through scaffolded, cumulative assessment, rather than relying on single high-stakes tasks.

It also explores the trade-offs institutions are navigating, including balancing authenticity with workload, maintaining perceptions of rigour, and reducing reliance on detection-led approaches.

A central idea is that pedagogical coherence enables stronger, more credible assurance, and underpins both relational and technological dimensions of the Connected Assurance Framework.

This episode discusses the Connected Assurance Framework, which underpins the entire season. This framework is discussed in OES's positioning paper on Assurance of Learning which can be found here: https://oes.edu.au/assuranceoflearning/

Published by OES (Online Education Services) – www.oes.edu.au
Recorded in Melbourne, Australia.