Influencing critical engagement with assessment criteria Darrin Beattie

Influencing critical engagement with assessment criteria Darrin Beattie, Careers Service Curriculum Development Officer Coherent Curriculum themes: assessment and feedback; student engagement

Career Development Modules (CDM) • Suite of 4, year long, 20 credit work based learning modules for levels 5, 6 & 7 • 500+ students from a range of academic schools representing all three faculties • Part of Project 2012 • Assessment for learning • Transparency in assessment processes

Intervention: annotations • Student use of annotations within CDM assignment 1 to identify specific passages that they believe are the strongest evidence for each assessment criterion.

Intervention’s aim and objectives • Raise lower quartile of CDM marks by: • Promoting critical engagement with assessment criteria • “Testing” student understanding of assessment criteria • Generating more effective feedback • Evolving assessment criteria

Assessment criteria

Assignment 1: Exemplar. student annotations and feedback Related passagerelated within feedback : . . . there is limited evidence of analysis in your discussions of goals, key issues and actions and this will improve by adopting a more critical and evaluative approach e. g. did you consider what may be causing teacher attitudes so as to ensure that how you made your offer to support sporting Related passage within feedback : activities was sensitive to such issues? Passage from feedback referring to unconscious competence? : “. . . there is evidence of both primary and secondary research. . . Learning in RXyour is aassignment better example of applied learning in that you but when evident, has not been suitably have clearlydeveloped related the knowledge acquired from e. g. this source asnew examples of applied learning what (learning styles) and presented an explicit example of your applying specifically did you learn about leadership through observing this knowledge activity). Thethen highlighted passage relates your (forces supervisor that you applied when leading small general learning Learning RX relates an explicit example of applied groups”? new knowledge. . .

Unit reflections Students are critically engaging with the assessment criteria prior to submission Student selected passages for annotation suggest unconscious competence in evidencing criteria Commonly misunderstood criterion easily identified Easier to write formative feedback

“Whispered” student feedback It helped me grow from last year’s assignments and fully integrate each of the graduate skills in my role as a student tutor Glad it was not worth any marks but very useful and unusual I understand the need for a word limit but it was at times difficult to explain yourself to the fullest extent within the word limit

Student feedback from MEQ Likes: “The increased ability to evaluate selfperformance”; “the level of learning independence. I also enjoyed the assessments”; “Improves critical analysis and other skills”; “Focussed on assessment criteria”; “Improved focus and drive in general towards work and studies as a result of this module”; “The modes of assessment were good” Dislikes: “Inflexible marking standard”; “Extremely specific marking scheme”; “The marking of the essay was very strict”; “The marking scheme is too "tick box" style”; “The formality of some examples, I struggled to understand some points”; “The assessment was repetitive and lacked clarification as to how to score higher marks” “I don't think I could give three reasons, I love this module!”

Review of aim and objectives • No discernible effect on CDM lower quartile mark, but intervention: • Has promoted critical engagement with assessment criteria • Does “test” understanding of assessment criteria • Produce more effective feedback • Will develop the assessment criteria

Issues • Assessment criteria appearing in nonassessed annotation rather than assessed script • Perception of “jumping through hoops” • “Blunderbuss” approach to annotations render information meaningless

Developments • Annotation minus rationale • More “effective” pitch to students • Feedback relating effective as well as less effective examples to specific criterion • Deeper analysis of impact