Table Of Contents
Consistency of assessment
In courses that are assessed by discursive writing, consistency of marking is bound to be difficult, not to say impossible, to achieve; this is particularly the case in courses with large enrolments, where the only practical solution is to have teams of lecturers/tutors marking the same assignment. However, inconsistent assessment can be quite unsettling and confusing for the students, as they try to reach an understanding of the assessment criteria and the standards of performance expected of them.
There are a variety of methods by which teaching staff and departments endeavour to standardise their marking; for example:
- by drawing up assessment rubrics listing criteria of assessment, with or without detailed descriptors for different levels of achievement for each criterion
- by running moderation sessions in cases where large numbers of assignments are to be marked by a team of assessors; and also
- by practising double-marking - at least for essays at the higher and lower ends of the achievement spectrum.
One advantage of using assessment rubrics is that they can be handed out and used in class in a number of ways to familiarise the students with the standards used in assessing their work.
Assessment rubrics
See, for example, Schuhmacher & Markham (2004).
There are, in fact, a number of websites, some commercial, the majority aimed at primary and secondary teachers, which explain the construction and use of rubrics and/or provide software to facilitate their construction and/or storage and sharing on public servers. See, for example:
Beyond simply reading and perhaps discussing the rubrics in class, students may be asked to practising using them to assess (sections of) sample assignments.
In some cases it may be appropriate to ask students to collaborate in drawing up an assessment rubric for a particular assignment.
Peer assessment – having students assess each others' work – can be a problem for Chinese (and other) students: some will be unwilling to criticise others in the public arena; some may feel that only the teacher's assessment is authoritative.
However, one very effective way of utilising assessment rubrics is to have students use them to assess their own work. In a recent action research project, Schuhmacher & Redpath (2005) combined student self-assessment with online submission of assignments, as follows:
Prior to submitting their assignments through the university LMS, students assessed their work according to several specified criteria, adding a brief note to each to justify the marks they gave themselves. Having received and read the assignment, the teacher could either accept and validate the student's self-assessment, or modify that assessment on one or more criteria. If the assessment was to be modified, the teacher would add an explanation of why her assessment differed from that of the students.
For an account of a similar use of student self-assessment in a non-electronic setting, and which includes a useful example of an assessment rubric designed for the purpose, see Cathers (2006).
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To tell the truth, from my experience this semester, it seems to me that this university has a bit of a problem in this area, in that different markers have different standards. For example: there is an essay I have read, which according to my understanding is very well written, and other students who have read it agree with me, we all think it's better than what I wrote myself, and should have got a better mark. But that's not how it turned out: in the end my result was higher than his. He was very disappointed, and other students who had read both papers couldn't understand it, either. It was the same course, but different teachers, different markers doing the marking. So, when the results came out we were all very disappointed.
And this wasn't an isolated incident. The other case I heard about – it is not a subject I've studied, so I don't know what it calls for in terms of format or content. But I know how it affected the students. Because, this guy who got full marks, from what he himself said, he was really surprised; he felt himself that he hadn't put a lot of work into this assignment, yet his mark was much better than that of people who'd worked hard on it. I don't say that working hard on an assignment means you have to get a good mark; all I'm saying is, that there's a difference between the marking standards of different teachers. And sometimes it seems their standards are lower than those of the students themselves...
And then there are some lecturers and tutors who the students feel are not very conscientious, in class or in correcting their work – perhaps in contrast to the amount of effort they themselves have put in; or perhaps because even without putting in much work they still get quite good results. It's not necessarily the case that they use different standards in marking; maybe some just mark a bit softer, while others mark harder, and take off more marks for a bad example or a referencing error. Then again, other teachers don't worry about these things but focus on grammar and language usage, for example; that's another source of difference. That's how the students see it.
— Daniel