Assessing Students' Written Work

Marking Essays and Reports

Catherine Haines

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367350819
• eBook ISBN: 9781000393682
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Assessment is one of the most powerful tools in teaching, yet it is rarely measured in effort, time and effectiveness and is often done alone, against the clock and with minimal training. This practical and realistic book is designed to help practitioners who wish to improve their impact in assessing a large and diverse range of students. This second edition has been fully updated to include the views of students and recent developments in remote assessment, plagiarism, grading and feedback tools. The second half of the book considers the main assessment methods, with advice addressing common challenges.

It will help newer assessors to:

• clarify their role and make the best use of time and technology
• gain confidence with assessment terms and processes
• give motivating feedback and support student writing
• tailor their approach and learn from practitioners within their discipline to extend their current range of solutions
• consider in more depth: essays, reports and projects, practicals and fieldwork, mathematically-based learning and exams.

Both newly appointed and more experienced lecturers in further and higher education, postgraduate students, part time staff and graduate teaching assistants will find this an invaluable guide and reference tool.

Part 1
You and assessment

Chapter 1
Your role in assessment

COMMON CONCERNS IN ASSESSMENT

Listed in the following text box are questions asked by beginning teachers in higher education at a recent training workshop about their role and practices in assessment:

• ■ How much detail should I give in written feedback to students?
• ■ I’d like to know how to mark quickly; how do you do it?
• ■ I want to know how to achieve objectivity and consistency when some aspects are excellent and others are lacking within a piece of work, i.e., how do I deal with a half model answer?
• ■ How do I balance ‘being critical’ with not being too discouraging and undermining the student’s confidence?
• ■ I’d like to know about the need for marking schemes and model answers. How much should the student know?
• ■ How do I know where to pitch the assessment and marking for under graduate and for master’s level work?
• ■ How do you know whether the mark you have given is the ‘right one’?

What are your key questions right now? This book aims to provide practical answers to questions like the ones here. This chapter aims to help you to clarify what your role and attitudes to assessment are right now, in order to gain the most from the relevant sections of the book. We begin with how you have been assessed.

ASSESSMENT: YOUR EXPERIENCE AND ATTITUDES

Of course, we are affected by our experiences. It is worth asking yourself a few questions about your own experience of assessment, and considering what this might mean for your style in the role of assessor.

You are, by definition, a successful product of the assessment system – or you wouldn’t be invited to assess people today. It is likely that most students that you will be required to assess will have a worse assessment record than yours, have experienced less academic success and may need a different approach to encourage them to achieve their best.

Some experiences of assessment: formative andsummative

‘I remember being told at primary school not to be so stupid as to ask questions and to get on with my work. I felt this was unfair.’

‘As soon as she said I was not very good at maths, I was determined to prove her wrong!’

‘I was told, “You can’t do computing, you’re a girl who likes English.” I did computing.’

And these are just a few examples of my responses to some assessment experiences. The importance of this is that you understand your own tendencies when under pressure and consider that the preferences and needs of others are very likely to be different.

Assessment can affect our progress

Those of us within the UK system will have passed through some common stages of assessment that have shaped our current choices. Some of these stages had direct results on what choices we had open to us. Table 1.1 shows the progression through an assessment history.

TABLE 1.1 An assessment history showing progression

Assessment stage	Purpose of assessment	Results	Impact on next stage
GCSE	Progression to A-level choices	A-C Pass D-F Fail	Qualifies for progression
Advanced level, orGNVQ	To discriminate between candidates, i.e., rank, best to worst students	A-F Distinction, Merit, Pass, Fail	Directly linked to university and course of study
Access to HE, Foundation year	To provide alternative access entry for students to demonstrate their capabilities without completing previous qualifying stages	Profile of achievement samples of work
Degree level	To discriminate between candidates	First, II1, II11, III, Pass/Fail	Directly linked to progression to master’s level study, some job choices
Professional qualifications for area of work, e.g., teaching, management	To establish competence	Pass/Fail	Qualification in current job, linked to probation or promotion
Master’s	To establish competence and to highlight particular distinction	Distinction, Pass, Fail	Linked to acceptance for higher study, research degree, job progression
MPhil	In arts/humanities, to establish research project; in sciences, stage before PhD, or awarded instead of PhD	Pass Re-submit Fail	Linked to acceptance for higher study, research degree
PhD	To establish competence at autonomous research study	Pass Re-submit MPhil Fail	Qualifying level for academic, research positions

HOW ASSESSMENT CAN AFFECT OUR EMOTIONS AND PERFORMANCE

The best assessment experiences can motivate and encourage us to further learning and achievement and build on our strengths. The worst assessment experiences, perhaps disappointing exam results, a failed driving test or getting lower grades than expected, can limit our life choices or discourage us from future efforts or give us information about our limitations with respect to others.

You may have evolved preferences about the ways you like to be encouraged to work harder in your current situation; perhaps by being paid more, being praised for your efforts or seeing positive results in your research. How do you want to be criticised? Throughout our working and learning lives, the opinions of others about the things we are not yet doing as well as we could are of immense value. In our research work, for example, we are accustomed to seeking opinions from our colleagues, peers, supervisors and experts in our discipline, and so on. Assessment can provide some of these opportunities for students.

ANXIETY, SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Awareness and measurement of mental health issues have much increased in society in the past decade. There is more widespread acceptance that we all occupy a position along a continuum from mental wellness to unwellness and that there are many factors which can change this over time.

Studying at university is a time filled with challenges which may impact on our innate resilience and make us more susceptible to reduced mental wellness, particularly anxiety and depression. Financial worries, new work challenges, being distant from support networks or having to create new ones have all been identified as factors which affect students (and new staff) and take a toll on resilience.

The first onset of mental unwellness is also likely to occur within the age cohort for most UK students, that is, up to the age of 25. Culturally, females may feel more able to express their anxiety, but male suicide rates demonstrate that mental distress is a widespread experience which may be hidden. I recall being told that Oxford and Cambridge lock the doors to their higher buildings at exam time to reduce the opportunity for student suicides. Regular or heavy drinking and other substance misuse may be prevalent among a student’s peer group and are also associated with reduced mental wellness.

Having our own performance measured by a more powerful person inevitably activates human anxiety. Assessment and becoming an assessor are therefore linked with managing anxiety in yourself and your students. Institutions are taking steps to proactively support students, particularly early in their courses, and at times of peak stress. It is becoming more common to find resources on offer within institutions for both staff and students such as training to become a mental first aider, referrals to counselling and workshops on mental well-being and maintaining resilience. Some further recommended sources which you may explore and share with your own students are listed at the close of this chapter.

Here, Dr Sarah McDonald, a new lecturer in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, describes her experience of training as a mindfulness practitioner and recommends some resources which she has found helpful in supporting her own and her students’ resilience.

‘Mindfulness as portrayed today might seem like a peace-out cliché that has become unavoidable and as divisive as Marmite. If you dig the ethos and have the skills, you don’t need me to explain its benefits, but if you are a doubter, let me say that I HATED much of my mindfulness practitioner training. I would regularly spend meditations angrily berating the practice in my head for wasting MY time when I had MILLIONS of things to DO. But it turns out that was the point. I had lost the ability to stand back and rest even for two minutes. When I finally started to realise and accept this, I still didn’t like meditating (and still don’t), but I did start to find things that helped me to untangle ‘me’ from ‘constantly trying to get things done me.’ Yoga. Walking. Talking about my thoughts.

Mindfulness isn’t all yoga and meditation, although they can play a role. It’s about really getting to know your mind and how it works, how your thoughts develop and prompt you to act, and how much you try to fight or ignore your thoughts. If someone is being mindful, they can recognise their thoughts as just being thoughts, and that acting isn’t a necessity. When we are anxious or stressed, this tends to fly out the window, and we can find ourselves doing things we would probably do quite differently if we were calm and in control. Often our actions are attempts to get rid of our thoughts and the negative emotions that seem to come with them, rather than accept them just being there.

Being a new teacher and handling assessments is highly likely to bring lots of stressful thoughts and anxieties to mind, so how can you stay mindful and not act rashly or avoidantly?

1. Remind yourself that any anxious thoughts you are having are ‘just thoughts’ and are ones that it is logical that you or anyone in your position could have.
2. Being compassionate to yourself is really important, and most of us are terrible at showing ourselves kindness, but you can find out more and get some excellent resources from www.compassionatemind.co.uk.
3. Make use of Mind’s great web site and helpful guidance: www.mind.org.uk/information-support/drugs-and-treatments/mindfulness/mindfulness-exercises-tips/#.XUHx-8rTWhA.
4. You can do a full eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course here, with excellent resources including videos: https://palousemindfulness.com/.’

TRANSITION FROM SCHOOL TO UNIVERSITY

One phase we can predict will be challenging for students is as they make their first transition into university life. Full time students may move home or country. Part time students will face the challenge of integrating a new academic life into their many existing demands. Indeed, many institutions recognise the impact this may have on assessment by excluding first year assessment grades from impacting on the final degree classification. The first year is also a phase when many institutions may deploy PhD students and teaching assistants to provide assessment and feedback on performance to stu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Series editor introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Student voices
• Part 1 You and assessment
• Part 2 You and your assessment in the disciplines
• Bibliography
• Index