Creative Futures Innovation Toolkit

By David Yarwood

When we talk about innovation in higher education, assessment is often the elephant in the seminar room. Despite bold claims about graduate attributes and creativity, much of our assessment practice remains rooted in risk-averse, standardised, and compliance-driven models.

Over the past year, I’ve been exploring this tension more deeply — most recently through a Critical Discourse Analysis of UK university assessment policies, which I’ve submitted for academic review. The early insights weren’t surprising, but they were sobering:

Assessment policies often reinforce institutional priorities such as efficiency, surveillance, and standardisation — rather than enabling creativity, flexibility, or pedagogical responsiveness.

Even the rise of AI, which could transform feedback and personalisation, is frequently framed as a threat to be policed, rather than a tool to be used creatively.

So what do we do about it?

That’s the driving question behind this project: a Teaching & Learning Toolkit for Innovation and Creativity: a set of practical, adaptable, and research-informed approaches that put risk-taking, reflection, and real-world problem-solving back into the heart of the student experience.

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🌱 What’s in the Toolkit?

Each post in this new series will explore a specific theme, idea or classroom strategy that can help us move towards more authentic and empowering learning. Early topics include:

• 💡 Design Sprints: Applying rapid prototyping methods from the creative industries into classroom-based problem solving.
• 🔄 Ungrading: Shifting the focus from marks to meaningful feedback and self-reflection.
• 🧠 Metacognition: Helping students understand and direct their own learning processes.
• 🧭 Assessing the Process: Designing assessments that reward iteration, collaboration, and intellectual curiosity — not just polished outputs.

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🛠️ Why a Toolkit?

I’m not suggesting we abandon standards or rigour, far from it. But if our goal is to prepare students to think critically, act entrepreneurially, and adapt in uncertain futures, we need assessment practices that reflect those values.

This toolkit is about building capacity, for students and staff, to teach, learn and assess in ways that reflect the messiness of real-world challenges. It’s also a space for experimentation, informed by theory but grounded in day-to-day practice.

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🧭 What’s Next?

In my next post, I’ll share a simple framework for using Design Sprints in a classroom setting — including a downloadable guide you can adapt for your own context.

If any of this resonates, I’d love to hear from you. What’s getting in the way of creative assessment in your own practice? What would you like to see in the toolkit?