When was the last time you were given a grade for a piece of work? For us, since embarking on our first ‘proper’ jobs more than two decades ago, the answer is never. We have received feedback, guidance, support, and constructive criticism, but never a grade.
It was a step towards achieving our institutional ‘Aberdeen 2040’ ambition to deliver work-based learning at scale, and we wanted to create something that didn’t just talk about the world of work, but actively mirrored it.
This led us to a fundamental question: if the workplace thrives on feedback, why does higher education often remain so focused on grading? This question formed the foundations of a new course, piloted last term, which moved beyond traditional marking.
So, what did we do, why did we do it, and how did it go?
This simple observation was something that got us thinking when we started to design a work-based learning course for level two undergraduate students last year. As a side note, it’s probably worth sharing that we’re the Head of the Careers and Employability Service and the Dean for Employability and Entrepreneurship at the University, so we’re passionate about providing students with authentic careers education.
The ‘Experiment’ – PD2503 is alive!
In January 2025, we launched PD2503 (Work-Based Learning: Team Projects with Employer Partners). Twenty-three undergraduate students from a diverse range of degree disciplines enrolled. They were formed into teams and tasked with tackling real-world projects, aligned to our strategic themes of sustainability and inclusion, for one of our brilliant employer partners. Projects ranged from designing a biodiverse eco-garden on a smallholding and developing a sustainability plan for a community light show to developing a skills toolkit for young people, and designing a coaching board game.
The most novel aspect of the course was its assessment as we removed grades entirely! Eeek!!
Every component was structured as a professional milestone to be achieved. This wasn’t about reducing rigour; it was about refocusing the objective. We wanted to swap the anxiety of chasing a grade for the professional practice of receiving and acting on feedback.
The student journey involved a series of sequential tasks, including a project application, a job interview, creating a detailed project plan, and delivering a final report and video pitch to their project sponsor.
How did shifting the focus to feedback go?
From our perspective, this approach didn't necessarily save time for us or the students. However, it fundamentally changed how that time was spent during the course. Gone was the agony of whether a report was a B or an A grade. Instead, all our energy went into providing clear, actionable feedback that would help the students improve and succeed in the next stage of their project.
This sequential structure was vital. A good example was the Personal Development Plan (PDP), which students built upon throughout the course. Early feedback was essential; if the initial foundations of the plan were weak, students were given the opportunity to reflect and resubmit, ensuring they could complete the later, more complex stages successfully.
The response from students and examiners has been overwhelmingly positive, validating our approach. As our External Examiner noted:
“The sequential and reflective nature of the tasks and milestones set for students promotes a culture of self-regulated learning with the support of continuous formative feedback.”
This culture of development, rather than assessment, is exactly what we had hoped to create.
The student experience
Ultimately, the true test of any course success lies with the students. Their feedback consistently highlighted the value of developing transferable skills in a realistic setting – after all, they were working on a real project with real employer partners!
One student commented, “I liked that it helped me to experience the 'work life',” while another noted, “I liked how the course focused on developing important skills that can be used for the future.”
The focus on professional development was a key recurring theme for us, and the Personal Development Plan was central to this, described as a “very good way to track where I'm at with the project and helped me a lot to reflect my skills and my future plan.”
Most powerfully, one student directly linked the course to their career success: “CV building!! first 3 weeks of the course was very informative and really helped me learn how to build a good CV [and] how to do a good interview…which helped me a lot on my career. I think I land myself an internship thanks to the skills and knowledge i got from this course, thank you so much!!”
The employer partner experience
We were grateful to our host employers who all got on board for the pilot. All four student teams submitted a range of outputs from the project, each accompanied by a 5 minute video pitch. One team even made a prototype of their invention, to bring their coaching game to life.
Sarah Smith from Lightbulb.coach Ltd commented “It is a great way to prepare the future workforce which can only be of value to any employer. It is also an opportunity to work on a project that you perhaps see as a luxury or too big to tackle on your own.”
Although our host employers didn’t get involved in the assessment side of the course, they did provide hugely valuable feedback for their teams. Feedback for one team included “I was really impressed with the students’ submission — the content was strong and clearly reflected a great deal of thought and effort. While the project didn’t cover every single element outlined in my original brief (understandably so, given its size and scope), the team made a smart decision to focus on a smaller, manageable area. Within that, they performed extremely well.”
A key lesson we learned from working with our employer partners was that they were willing and keen to put more of their time to working with the student teams. As a result, next year we will be building in weekly or fortnightly meetings into the course structure for the student teams to connect with their employer host throughout their project.
Lessons learned and our next steps
We really do feel this course has been a resounding success, with all 23 students successfully completing…or to use the correct Student Record System terminology, they all ‘Achieved’ the course.
We have learned that removing grades doesn’t diminish the need for robust feedback – if anything it heightens it. The ‘Achieved/Not Achieved’ model, supported by continuous dialogue with the students, has proven to be a really good way to build student confidence and prepare them for the realities of the modern workplace.
Moving forward, the course will be running again next year with some small refinements, but its core philosophy will remain. We are committed to creating authentic learning experiences that value development and reflection, and that prepare students not just to pass assessments, but to really thrive in their future careers.
Interested in funding out more?
We have set up a Teams site called ‘The Work-Based Learning Network,’ both as a forum and another experiment in WBL, so if you’re interested, please follow this link to request access.
For those who want to read some more about the topic, see the resources below, which should get you started. They should all be freely accessible for staff and students:
Framework for Embedding Employability in Higher Education
- Great resource from Advance HE, that forms part of their wider ‘Essential Frameworks for Enhancing Student Success’ series.
- A comprehensive look at the theory and practice behind effective work-based learning (or work-integrated learning) in higher education.
