Essay Feedback
School of Humanities, History Course - Year 1 & Year 2
Class size: over 300
Technological competancy: Basic
Suitable for online learning
Supporting material:
Summary
Students complete an ‘essay plan form’ that they submit this to their tutor. They then have a 10-minute ‘pre-essay tutorial’ to discuss the plan (which is not graded). After this, students then submit the final essay (we don’t give feedback on drafts). The tutors mark the essay and then have a 10-minute ‘post-essay tutorial’ to discuss the feedback. At level 2 there is no pre-essay tutorial and planning feedback, just a post-essay tutorial.
Objectives
- To implement a more consistent approach to feedback delivery across different courses and programmes.
- Efficient time-saving process for making feedback.
- To promote a more positive approach to feedback.
- To encourage a dialogue between staff and students around feedback.
What was done?
Implementation of common assessment criteria across assessments, using 3 main criteria of Knowledge and Research, Comprehension and Critical evaluation, and Academic communication. Markers reflected on how many words the used across different grade bands and made this more consistent. They used their distribution of grades in comparison to other markers to check that they were using the grading scale consistently. Finally they also looked at the verbal descriptors they and aligned them consistently with the grade.
What worked well?
Students generally seem to appreciate that they can speak to their tutors about the essay before submitting it (given it is their first piece of written work and they tend to be anxious about it). However, it has to be said that the students do not always take full advantage of the tutorials – often they leave it too late to write their plan which means the feedback tutors give is somewhat limited! A few students miss their pre-essay tutorials, and quite a fair number don’t turn up to the post-essay tutorials. But those that do seem to benefit from them.
Benefits
| Student Benefits | Staff Benefits |
|---|---|
| Where the analytics are employed, we have seen positive student feedback regarding the consistency across markers. |
Clearer expectations on what is required in feedback comments across a team and more efficient use of making time. Effective moderation process, and increased consistency in grading. |
Challenges
| Student Chellenges | Staff Challenges |
|---|---|
| Students still struggle to use their feedback effectively. We are developingguidance on reflecting on coursework and exam feedback and setting actionable goals to try adn address this. |
Initial agreement had to be reached between markers across the programmes in the school. Markers also need to reflect and and implement the feedback. Course leads need to adopt this approach and in some cases where the marking team is highly diverse we need a different approach (dissertations, for instance). |
References:
McAleer, P., Cleland Woods, H. and Paterson, H. (2020) Using Personalised Analytics to Improve Your Assessment Feedback. 13th Annual University of Glasgow Learning and Teaching Conference, 25 Aug 2020.