Assessment (non-exam) Brief

Submission deadlines: Students should submit all work by the published deadline date and time. Students experiencing sudden or unexpected events beyond your control which impact your ability to complete assessed work by the set deadlines may request mitigation via the extenuating circumstances procedure. Students with disabilities or ongoing, long-term conditions should explore a Summary of Reasonable Adjustments. Students may use the delayed assessment scheme for pre-determined mitigation on a limited number of assessments in a year. Check the Delayed Assessment Scheme area on Portico to see if this assessment is eligible.

Return and status of marked assessments: Students should expect to receive feedback within 20 working days of the submission deadline, as per UCL guidelines. The module team will update you if there are delays through unforeseen circumstances (e.g. ill health). All results when first published are provisional until confirmed by the Examination Board. 

Copyright Note to students: Copyright of this assessment brief is with UCL and the module leader(s) named above. If this brief draws upon work by third parties (e.g. Case Study publishers) such third parties also hold copyright. It must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or shared with any other individual(s) and/or organisations, including web-based organisations, without permission of the copyright holder(s) at any point in time.

Referencing: You must reference and provide full citation for ALL sources used, including AI sources, articles, text books, lecture slides and module materials.  This includes any direct quotes and paraphrased text.  If in doubt, reference it.  If you need further guidance on referencing please see UCL’s referencing tutorial for students. Failure to cite references correctly may result in your work being referred to the Academic Misconduct Panel.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools in your Assessment: Your module leader will explain to you if and how AI tools can be used to support your assessment. In some assessments, the use of generative AI is not permitted at all. In others, AI may be used in an assistive role which means students are permitted to use AI tools to support the development of specific skills required for the assessment as specified by the module leader. In others, the use of AI tools may be an integral component of the assessment; in these cases the assessment will provide an opportunity to demonstrate effective and responsible use of AI. See page 3 of this brief to check which category use of AI falls into for this assessment. Students should refer to the UCL guidance on acknowledging use of AI and referencing AI. Failure to correctly acknowledge use of AI in assessments may result in students being reported via the Academic Misconduct procedure. Refer to the section of the UCL Assessment success guide on Engaging with AI in your education and assessment.

Content of this assessment brief

Section B: Assessment Brief and Requirements

Task 1. Designing and Developing the Website

As part of this assessment, you are required to design, develop, and deploy a small website (or a cohesive portfolio of web pages) to showcase the knowledge and skills you have acquired over the course of this module.

Your website will be part of an exhibition available to all students enrolled on the module to view and evaluate.

You are strongly advised to develop a web-based CV as your portfolio. However, you may choose to develop a website showcasing personal interests, voluntary work, social/political work, or notes around academic research or scholarship.

You must design and develop the website by taking into consideration user experience, accessibility, responsiveness, and relevant performance metrics (e.g. PageSpeed Insights). You may want to apply other user/automated testing methods (e.g. WAVE from WebAIM) to further improve your work prior submission.

User-Centred Design and User Experience should remain focal for the developed website. You should demonstrate the stages of the design process, through wireframes and references to best practice.

Responsive design and accessibility considerations should also be evident in the final submission. You are allowed to use open-source templates, or your own code developed as part of your Tutorial Sheet work, however, you should change the code and acknowledge the original author (on a separate References HTML page and in the accompanied report). Changing third party code should not be limited to content, but should include HTML and CSS changes. This submission should demonstrate your design and development skills.

You have the freedom to choose the scope and structure of your personal website. There are, however, a set of required elements your website should contain. These are:

· have three or more HTML pages,

· have one of the pages dedicated to referencing external code used in the website,

· have a navigation element consistently displayed throughout the website (i.e. all pages),

· have HTML form. elements,

· have consistency in look and feel across pages,

· have the website published on UCL Personal Webpages server.

NOTE: Please refer to the assessment criteria prior to starting the work on your website. You are advised to keep a record of your learning achievements (related to technical skills or broader understanding) throughout the duration of your work, to help you remember the details at time of reflection and self-assessment.

This task is considered completed, when you:

· Submit code to your final website on Moodle by the given deadline.

Task 2. Hosting the website

Prior to starting the work you should familiarise yourself with the web hosting available to UCL students commonly referred to as UCL Personal Webpages ( https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/websites-apps/personal-webpages) and the teaching material provided on Moodle.

An example of a website available on the hosting is available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uczckst/inst0007/week03/exercise03/wk03-exercise03.html 

You will only be able to upload your website on the UCL Personal Webpages from UCL-managed machines (on campus), via Desktop@UCL Anywhere or using UCL’s Citrix Workspace.

NOTE: You should remember that the UCL Personal pages are available to everyone on the web. You should remember not to add any content that may not be suitable for publishing widely and if necessary remove your website once the assessment mark is confirmed.

This task is considered completed, when you:

· Provide the URL to your deployed website to be included for an exhibition.  

Task 3: Self-assessment report

Critically assess your own website against the given criteria and a good example of a peer’s website submitted for the exhibition.

Your critical assessment must be submitted as a report using the form. provided (see Appendix 1). Your report should highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your website, including the design, development process, and evaluation as seen in the assessment criteria. Your assessment should also include a reflective assessment of your learning journey.

When writing your critical self-assessment you should include reflections around:  

· the key stages of the project and justifications for decisions, such as user-centred design, and user experience;

· the use of specific tools and technologies, such as prototyping to wireframing;

· application of user-testing or usability evaluation method;

· justifications for choosing specific user-testing or usability methods;

· validity of the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. code;

· accessibility at design and deployment stages;

· website performance such as Google PageSpeed Insights tests;

· the key learning outcomes from working on the project;

· key challenges that helped you learn;

· key limitations and the future work that remained beyond the scope of the project.

Along with critical assessment you should allocate a mark that reflects your assessment for each of the given criteria and in accordance to the given rubric. The self-awarded marks for individual criteria will form. your final mark for the module if you satisfy the pre-requisites for self-assessment and if the mark is not revised by tutor. Reports, which contain marks that do not reflect assessment with the given rubric, will be adjusted by the tutor and lead to revision of the final mark to reflect the lack of critical self-assessment.

This task is considered completed, when you:

· Submit your self-assessment report on Moodle by the given deadline.

Notes on Marking

Where pre-requisites are not met, the marks are guaranteed to be revised by the tutor. Additionally, any mark above 74 will also be subject to review and adjustment by the tutor.

Where self-assessment criteria and the corresponding mark appear to be applied inaccurately, the marks will be adjusted to better reflect the performance on assessing your work critically and assigning a mark in line with the rubric and critical thought.

Note: Module leader reserves the right to review and adjust ANY of the marks based on the submitted self-assessment report. Students should follow the assessment rubric closely to reduce the likelihood of mark adjustments by tutor.

How to qualify for taking part in self-assessment and reduce the changes of your mark being adjusted by the tutor?

All pre-requisites, as listed in Section A will need to be completed by the provided deadlines. The following chart (Figure 1) will help you navigate this assessment and minimise the risk of having your mark adjusted by the tutor.

Figure 1: Navigating assessment and minimising reducing the likelihood the risk of having your mark adjusted by the tutor.

Section C: Module Learning Outcomes covered in this Assignment

This assignment contributes towards the achievement of the following stated module Learning Outcomes as highlighted below: 

· understand the basic principles of website design and development;

· familiarised with technologies and related tools for prototyping, mark-up, and scripting;

· understand concepts and develop skills related to user experience and accessibility;

· understand concepts related to good practices of developing and evaluating websites.