What is a Feedback and Assessment Solution? (And why institutions need one system, not more tools)

Most universities already have an LMS.

Many also have a growing stack of add ons: a peer review tool, a rubric tool, a group evaluation workaround, plus spreadsheets and manual processes that keep everything moving.

And still, feedback and assessment feel harder than they should.

Educators spend time coordinating instead of teaching. Students get different expectations in every course. Teaching and learning teams support multiple workflows at once. And leadership struggles to get a clear picture of what’s working across programs.

That’s why more institutions are asking a new question:

Do we need more tools, or do we need a better system?

A modern feedback and assessment solution is that system. It brings fragmented assessment practices into one consistent workflow that can scale across courses, cohorts, and departments.

‍

The real problem isn’t effort. It’s fragmentation.

When assessment works well, it feels simple.

Students know what good work looks like. Feedback helps them improve. Educators can focus on learning, not logistics. Institutions can deliver quality consistently.

But as soon as things scale, the cracks show.

Because assessment is rarely designed as one connected workflow. It’s built piece by piece over time.

In many institutions, the reality looks like this:

• Submissions happen in the LMS
• Rubrics live in PDFs or shared drives
• Peer review happens somewhere else
• Group work evaluation is handled manually
• Moderation sits in spreadsheets
• Feedback formats change depending on the course

Each part makes sense on its own. But together, they create an assessment and feedback system that is hard to run, hard to improve, and nearly impossible to standardise.

‍

So what is a feedback and assessment solution?

A feedback and assessment solution is a single, scalable approach to assessment.

It unifies learning activities, workflows, analytics, and responsible AI into one assessment and feedback platform that works inside your existing teaching environment.

In practice, it helps institutions:

• Reduce educator workload (especially the hidden coordination work)
• Improve consistency and fairness across teaching teams
• Support learning activities beyond “submit and grade”
• Make assessment easier to manage at program level
• Give leadership visibility into quality and progress
• Prepare for AI and authentic assessment without chaos

It’s not about adding features. It’s about making good practice easier to repeat.

‍

What should a modern assessment and feedback platform include?

If you’re evaluating vendors, it helps to break it down into clear building blocks. A modern feedback and assessment solution should cover these essentials.

‍

1) LMS integrated assessment that fits how teaching actually works

Assessment should not live outside the LMS.

A scalable solution supports LMS integrated assessment, so educators and students do not have to switch between tools, tabs, and workflows just to complete one assignment cycle.

This matters because tool switching creates friction everywhere:

• More time spent on admin
• More confusion for students
• More support tickets for teaching teams
• More inconsistency across courses

When workflows are integrated, it becomes easier to scale what already works.

‍

2) Structured learning activities (not just submission and grading)

Most institutions already have submission covered.

The real difference comes from what happens around submission: the learning activities that turn assessment into learning.

That includes:

• Peer review and peer feedback
• Self assessment and reflection
• Group member evaluation
• Rubric based marking and moderation
• Formative check ins and improvement cycles

This is where many assessment tools for higher education fall short. They handle the final step, but not the learning design that supports student progress.

A strong assessment workflow system makes these activities easy to run consistently, even when cohorts are large.
‍

3) Rubrics and criteria that support consistency and fairness

At scale, assessment quality depends on shared interpretation.

Even experienced educators will apply criteria differently if the process is unclear or inconsistent. That’s not a skills gap. It’s what happens when systems rely on individual workarounds.

This is where rubrics become essential.

Rubrics help create clarity for students and alignment for teaching teams. They reduce “guesswork grading” and support fairer outcomes across cohorts.

If you want a practical starting point, this assessment rubrics template collection helps institutions standardise criteria without starting from scratch.

4) Analytics and visibility for leadership

Assessment is one of the most important parts of the learning experience, but it’s often the least visible at an institutional level.

A strong assessment and feedback platform should help leadership answer questions like:

• Are students receiving feedback on time?
• Where is workload highest?
• Which courses create the most bottlenecks?
• Are standards applied consistently across programs?
• What’s improving year over year?

Without visibility, assessment improvement becomes reactive. With visibility, it becomes strategic.

‍

5) Responsible AI support that keeps educators in control

AI is now part of assessment, whether institutions planned for it or not.

The opportunity is real: AI can help reduce repetitive workload, support clearer feedback, and assist students in developing their skills. But it also brings important considerations around trust, academic standards, transparency, and governance.

That’s why responsible implementation matters. UNESCO’s guidance on generative AI in education highlights both the potential of AI and the need for clear frameworks to use it ethically and effectively.

In a modern feedback and assessment solution, AI should support educators, not replace them. Instead of automating everything, it should enhance the practices that matter most.

For example, AI can help by:

• Making feedback faster and easier to craft
• Supporting consistency across large cohorts
• Guiding students to reflect and practise before they submit work
• Offering personalised prompts that strengthen learning

This is where tools like AI Practice come in. They are designed to work within structured workflows so that AI enhances learning and feedback quality, while educators stay fully in control of decisions and standards.

The goal is simple: scale feedback quality, without scaling workload.

‍

The biggest value: consolidation, not complexity

This is where decision makers lean in. Institutions do not need more tools. They need fewer tools that work better together.

A modern feedback and assessment solution acts as a consolidation layer. It brings multiple assessment activities into one connected workflow instead of spreading them across separate platforms.

That means:

• Less vendor overlap
• Less training and adoption friction
• Less support burden
• More consistency for students
• More control for leadership

And it creates a stronger foundation for scaling peer review, authentic assessment, and responsible AI.

If you want to see what this looks like in practice, explore FeedbackFruits success stories.

‍

What changes when assessment is designed for scale?

When institutions move from point tools to a unified system, the difference shows up quickly.

For educators

Less setup. Less chasing. Less repetition. More time for teaching and meaningful feedback.

For students

Clearer expectations. More consistent criteria. Feedback they can actually use.

For leadership

Visibility into quality and workload, and the ability to scale improvement across programs.

In short: assessment becomes a capability, not a recurring crisis.

‍

Conclusion: institutions need a system, not another tool

A modern feedback and assessment solution brings learning activities, workflows, analytics, and AI into one scalable assessment and feedback system.

It helps institutions reduce workload, improve consistency, and deliver better learning experiences at scale.

Not by asking educators to do more. But by giving them a system built for scale.

‍

See the Feedback and Assessment solution in action

If your institution is ready to move from fragmented tools to a single scalable workflow, the next step is to see what consolidation looks like in practice.

See the Feedback and Assessment solution in action.

‍