About the pilot:
The University of Glasgow is enhancing our assessment provisions and how we assess students to meet the demands of a digital-first world. Building on our Digital Assessment Platforms pilot in AY 2024/25, we’re expanding our trial of Cadmus in 2025/26. This pilot will broaden to include a wider range of courses, disciplines, and assessment types to test the platform in a variety of contexts. This will help to answer key questions that will inform the business case for long-term investment. In this pilot, a specific list of courses are involved and have been contacted ahead of roll-out.
This is a critical step toward a future-ready, digitally enabled assessment ecosystem and will help shape the case for sustainable transformation in how we design and deliver assessments.
About Cadmus:
Cadmus is a platform designed to support the creation and submission of a wide range of assessments in a secure online environment, helping us progress toward a digitally enabled assessment ecosystem. It’s not limited to longer-form tasks. Cadmus also enables scaffolded, formative, and exam-alternative assessments that promote deeper learning and student engagement.
Cadmus empowers staff to design inclusive and authentic assessments while maintaining academic integrity and enhancing assessment assurance. The platform offers valuable insights during delivery, supports scalable intervention strategies, and promotes a consistent experience for students without compromising privacy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What feedback did the 2024/2025 Cadmus Pilot receive?
Initial feedback from staff and students has been encouraging. Cadmus was praised for its intuitive interface, improved workflow efficiency, and ability to surface academic integrity concerns early.
We’d like to extend our sincere thanks to all staff and students who contributed to the evaluation of Cadmus during the initial pilot. Your input has been invaluable to both the University’s internal project team and the external product provider.
In the interest of transparency, the following quotes and insights are drawn from a formal evaluation report produced by Cadmus, based on the feedback gathered throughout the pilot.
Feedback:
In Cadmus [marking] is just intuitively easier, and aesthetically more pleasing. I didn't feel the marking dread. The process, the ability to engage, just kind of helped with mental anxiety. When it came to the marking it was a game changer, in a way I didn't expect at the start.” – Eamonn Butler McIntosh, Professor of Central European Politics and Security
“Having all the essays in one place, I felt the whole process was just quicker without having to jump around. In Moodle, they're in all different places. I marked more quickly and found the whole process pleasant.” – Robert Cowan, Director of Teaching Philosophy
“The overall experience has been positive, because the platform is very accessible and better than Moodle in terms of what you can do and the support you can offer [Colleague’s use of] tags in marking was very useful.” I'm a fan of the checklist...The ability for me to gather in one place a lot of resources is also useful.” – Dr Michael Loader, Lecturer in Central and East European Studies (Political & International Studies)
“Great to be able to see student progress. I felt it helped to remind students. I perceived fewer comments related to "give us guidance on how to write an essay" that question came up frequently last few years. This time, there was a step-by-step guide on what to do.” – Dr Cameron Floyd, Lecturer in Earth Sciences (School of Geographical & Earth Sciences)
Does Cadmus integrate with other university systems or processes?
Currently Cadmus is in pilot and processes such as the automated extension request aren’t in place. Cadmus is linked to Moodle Gradebook via LTI and works well from a staff perspective, but not all status updates are available for Student MyGrades. We appreciate full integration with other university systems is important if the pilot is successful and we look to roll out the platform wider, this will be a priority.
Can Cadmus be used for exams?
Yes. Cadmus supports time-limited assessments and integrates with lockdown browsers like Respondus for secure exam delivery.
What kind of analytics does Cadmus provide?
Cadmus offers both cohort-level and individual student engagement reports, which can support teaching interventions and integrity investigations.
Does Cadmus support group work?
Currently, Cadmus is optimised for individual assessments. Group functionality is a feature we will be piloting in AY 25/26 as part of the extended pilot.
Can students submit multimedia or non-text responses?
Cadmus supports embedded images, equations, hyperlinks, and footnotes. However, it’s primarily designed for written assessments.
Does Cadmus have and onboard spell check facility for multiple languages?
At the moment it's a British English spell check. We can now toggle this off at an assessment level, which is a result of supporting other language subjects.
Cadmus are increasingly supporting other languages and are expanding into more regions, so it's a feature request that may come in the future. Some third-party apps do work well with Cadmus and there may be third-party plugin/browser extension that can enable specific foreign language spell check on Cadmus.
What support can Cadmus offer in terms of detecting the use of AI in assessments?
Cadmus itself does not currently "AI-proof" assessments. It doesn't detect or prevent the use of generative AI tools by students. Instead, it supports good assessment design practices such as clarity of task, scaffolding, and originality that can help reduce opportunities for misconduct and encourage genuine engagement. Academic integrity still relies on thoughtful assessment design and clear expectations, supported by technology.