Assessment moderation software · for universities
Moderation season, without the email chase.
BriefCycle runs every coursework brief and exam paper through internal review, coordinator approval, external examiner review and final sign-off — versioned, audited, and chased automatically.
Self-hosted on your infrastructure, or hosted by us on an isolated per-university stack. Same product either way.
Today, assessment moderation runs on shared drives, spreadsheets and goodwill.
Version roulette
EXAM_final_v3_FINAL(2).docx sits in a shared folder next to four siblings. Which one did the external examiner actually read?
The chase
Admin staff track deadlines in a spreadsheet and chase reviewers one by one over email — every round, every module, every year.
Audit archaeology
When quality review lands, who approved what — and when — has to be reconstructed from inbox threads and folder timestamps.
The moderation workflow
Five steps, one owner each, nothing lost in between.
Admin staff create a workflow per module component and assign the five participants. Each step belongs to exactly one person, who is emailed the moment it becomes their turn.
Upload
The setter uploads the coursework brief or exam paper. Every upload is a new version — nothing is ever overwritten.
Internal review
A colleague reads the brief in the browser and accepts or returns it with comments. Up to 3 rounds.
AAC approval
The coordinator confirms the assessment fits the programme and signs it forward.
External review
The external examiner reviews online — no attachments, no institutional login hoops. Up to 3 rounds.
Admin check
Final administrative sign-off. The full history — every version, decision and timestamp — is already on record.
Returned? A Revise & respond step is inserted for the setter, followed by a fresh review round while rounds remain. Every round's documents and comments stay in the step history.
What you get
Built for exams offices, trusted by IT departments.
Every decision on record
Full document version history plus every accept, return, comment and timestamp. Quality review becomes an export, not an excavation.
The whole portfolio at a glance
The Swansea-style progress grid shows every module's state in one screen — filterable by year, person, role and deadline, with overdue and due-soon flags.
Nobody chases by hand
Whoever is holding an overdue or long-waiting step gets reminded automatically. Everyone gets a weekly digest; directors and AACs get a portfolio digest.
University SSO, day one
Microsoft Entra ID per institution, with auto-provisioning on first login and username/password as a fallback. Logins are gated to your tenant only.
Your brand, one hex value
Product name, university name, logo and accent colour set per tenant — pages, admin and notification emails all follow.
Help that can't drift
The “How it works” pages and every grid tooltip are generated from the same workflow definition the app runs — documentation stays true by construction.
Review workspace
Reviewers read and decide in one screen.
PDFs and text render in an embedded, permission-checked viewer — the brief on one side, the comments box and decision on the other. No downloading, no “see attached”.
- Word, Excel and PowerPoint render in the same viewer via self-hosted Collabora Online — strictly view-only, and nothing leaves your infrastructure.
- Every viewer callback re-checks the user's permissions.
- Step completion is atomic — double-clicks and stale forms can't sign off a step twice.
Hosting & security
One university, one stack.
Every institution runs its own isolated deployment — app, Postgres and a TLS-terminating proxy. Customer data is separated by construction, not by a tenant column. SSO is per-institution. “You host it” and “we host it” are the same artifact.
- Permission-checked downloads. Documents are served through an access-controlled view; the media store is never web-exposed.
- Backups are two volumes. Database and uploads are the entire tenant state — snapshot them and you're covered.
- Reminders without cron. A scheduler container runs deadline reminders daily and digests weekly.
- No stalled workflows. If a participant leaves mid-workflow, the exams office is alerted instead of the step silently stalling.
# a full university instance $ cp .env.example .env # domain, secrets, admin $ docker compose up -d # app + Postgres + auto-TLS # optional: Office docs in the viewer $ docker compose --profile office up -d
Pricing
An annual licence per institution.
Self-hosted
Run BriefCycle on your own infrastructure with Docker Compose. Your data never leaves campus. We provide the images, updates and support.
Annual licence · talk to us for a quote
Hosted by us
We operate your instance on a dedicated, isolated stack with your domain, your SSO and your branding. Backups and updates included.
Annual licence · talk to us for a quote
FAQ
Questions universities ask us.
What is BriefCycle?
BriefCycle is assessment moderation software for universities. It manages the review and approval workflow for coursework briefs and exam papers — internal review, academic assessment coordinator approval, external examiner review and exams-office sign-off — with document versioning, deadline reminders and a complete audit trail.
Can our university host BriefCycle ourselves?
Yes. BriefCycle ships as a Docker Compose stack — app, PostgreSQL and a TLS-terminating proxy — that runs on your own infrastructure. Alternatively we host a dedicated, isolated instance for you. Both options run the same product.
Does BriefCycle support university single sign-on?
Yes. Each instance connects to your institution's Microsoft Entra ID tenant. Users are auto-provisioned on first login, logins from other tenants are rejected, and username/password remains available as a fallback.
How do external examiners access documents?
External examiners review in the browser with their own account. PDFs and text documents render in an embedded, permission-checked viewer; Word, Excel and PowerPoint files render view-only via self-hosted Collabora Online, so nothing leaves the university's infrastructure.
Is our data isolated from other universities?
Yes. BriefCycle is single-tenant: every university gets its own application stack, database and file storage. Customer data is separated by construction, and a tenant backup is just two volumes.
Next step
See it with your own module list.
A demo takes half an hour, on a throwaway instance seeded with your modules and roles — so your exams office can judge it on their own portfolio, not ours.
Book a demo