Susan Bloxham

Understanding the rules of the game: marking peer assessment as a medium for developing students' conceptions of assessment

Students need to understand assessment processes in order to succeed in higher education. However, recent research has identified how difficult it is for students to become absorbed into the assessment culture of their disciplines, with a recognition that providing written criteria and grade descriptors is not enough to make this tacit ‘knowledge’ transparent to novice students. This paper reports on an exercise where sports studies students used assessment criteria to mark their peers work coupled with an assessment of their peer marking and feedback comments. The latter was included to encourage students to engage seriously with the peer assessment. Analysis of the data indicates considerable benefits for the students in terms of use of criteria, awareness of their achievements and ability to understand assessment feedback.

Marking and moderation in the UK: false assumptions and wasted resources

This article challenges a number of assumptions underlying marking of student work in British universities. It argues that, in developing rigorous moderation procedures, we have created a huge burden for markers which adds little to accuracy and reliability but creates additional work for staff, constrains assessment choices and slows down feedback to students. In this under‐researched area of higher education, the article will explore whether there are other ways to provide confidence in marking and grading. These might divert this energy into productive activities with useful outcomes for students and learning.

Generating dialogue in assessment feedback: exploring the use of interactive cover sheets

Theoretical approaches to understanding student engagement with assessment and feedback are increasingly emphasising the importance of dialogue in recognition that learning tacit knowledge is an active, shared process. This paper evaluates an experimental approach to providing feedback which was designed to create a dialogue between tutor and student without additional work for staff. Tutors on an outdoor studies degree attempted to set up a dialogue with students by providing written feedback in response to students’ questions about their work, requested on their assignment cover sheets. Data were collected in the form of their feedback questions, interviews with students and a focus group of staff. The data indicate that the approach encouraged students to think about their writing but that students’ limited understanding of staff expectations and standards limits their ability to initiate a meaningful dialogue with their tutors. More positively, the research suggests that if staff capitalise on and develop existing peer discussion of assessment, it may provide an important foundation for the greater challenge of entering into a dialogue with academic staff.

Mark my words: the role of assessment criteria in UK higher education grading practices

This article seeks to illuminate the gap between UK policy and practice in relation to the use of criteria for allocating grades. It critiques criterion-referenced grading from three perspectives. Twelve lecturers from two universities were asked to ‘think aloud’ as they graded two written assignments. The study found that assessors made holistic rather than analytical judgements. A high proportion of the tutors did not make use of written criteria in their marking and, where they were used, it was largely a post hoc process in refining, checking or justifying a holistic decision. Norm referencing was also found to be an important part of the grading process despite published criteria. The authors develop the notion of tutors’ standards frameworks, influenced by students’ work, and providing the interpretive lens used to decide grades. The implications for standards, and for students, of presenting the grading process as analytical and objective are discussed.

Learning to write in higher education: students' perceptions of an intervention in developing understanding of assessment criteria

This paper reports on the second phase of a project designed to improve students’ understanding of assessment demands. In Stage 1, Level 1 students were involved in a range of activities culminating in peer marking. This peer assessment was, itself, marked by the tutors to encourage students to engage positively with the process. Stage 2 of the project investigated whether these various intervention activities had any long-term impact on sports studies students’ approach to writing assignments. Interviews were conducted with six students who participated in Stage 1. For comparison purposes, a matched group of students from another vocationally-related course were also interviewed. The findings suggest that the peer assessment did encourage students to pay attention to assessment information. However, the students placed greater stress on the role of informal support, particularly verbal clarification of written guidance and feedback. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for practice.

Let’s stop the pretence of consistent marking: exploring the multiple limitations of assessment criteria

Unreliability in marking is well documented, yet we lack studies that have investigated assessors’ detailed use of assessment criteria. This project used a form of Kelly’s repertory grid method to examine the characteristics that 24 experienced UK assessors notice in distinguishing between students’ performance in four contrasting subject disciplines: that is their implicit assessment criteria. Variation in the choice, ranking and scoring of criteria was evident. Inspection of the individual construct scores in a sub-sample of academic historians revealed five factors in the use of criteria that contribute to marking inconsistency. The results imply that, whilst more effective and social marking processes that encourage sharing of standards in institutions and disciplinary communities may help align standards, assessment decisions at this level are so complex, intuitive and tacit that variability is inevitable. We conclude that universities should be more honest with themselves and with students, and actively help students to understand that application of assessment criteria is a complex judgement and there is rarely an incontestable interpretation of their meaning.

Accountability in grading student work: securing academic standards in a twenty-first century quality assurance context

This article, using a student outcomes definition of academic standards, reports on academics’ sense of standards as enacted through marking practices. Twelve lecturers from two UK universities were asked to ‘think aloud’ as they graded written assignments followed by a semi-structured interview. The interview data were used to investigate the source of tutors’ standards, their sense of accountability for their grading judgements, their use of artefacts and their attitude to internal and external moderation. The findings suggest that tutors believe there are established and shared academic standards in existence for their discipline and they endeavour to maintain them. There was no evidence of significant pressure or practice related to lowering of standards, although differences in tutors’ tacit ‘standards’ frameworks’ have the potential for bias. Whilst moderation has some power to secure standards within teams, the article discusses the implications of the research for assuring standards across universities and disciplines.

Examining the tension between academic standards and inclusion for disabled students: the impact on marking of individual academics' frameworks for assessment

This article draws on developing theory regarding assessment and marking to explore the impact of staff values regarding widening participation on grading decisions. It reports on an innovative creative arts module delivered for students with complex disabilities. Data collection included observation of teaching, interviews with staff, students and learning support staff, recordings of two academic team discussions and a questionnaire on moderation issues completed by staff. Whilst the students were very positive about the experience, the data identified pace of learning, the role of support workers and issues in authenticating student learning as aspects for future development. In particular, the research suggests that staff tackled the tension between valuing academic standards and inclusion by recasting student achievement as different rather than inferior, interpreting assessment rubrics in the light of their individual ‘frameworks’ for assessment. The article considers whether this recasting of standards illuminates the problematic nature of standards and assessment criteria in higher education.

External Peer Review of Assessment: An Effective Approach to Verifying Standards?.

There is growing international concern to regulate and assure standards in higher education. External peer review of assessment, often called external examining, is a well-established approach to assuring standards. Australian higher education is one of several systems without a history of external examining for undergraduate programmes that is currently considering the approach. What can entrants to external examining at that level learn from the UK higher education systems long history of external examining? To that end, this paper reports on a mixed methods research project designed to investigate current practices in how academic standards are conceived, constructed and applied by external examiners and debates the implications of the findings for the development of external examining in other countries. The findings suggest that the potential of experienced peers in a subject discipline to provide the assurance of standards is limited. It concludes by presenting various possible enhancements that might be considered.

‘You can see the quality in front of your eyes’: grounding academic standards between rationality and interpretation

This article considers the failure of theory to provide a workable model for academic standards in use. Examining the contrast between theoretical perspectives, it argues that there are four dimensions for which the academy has failed to provide an adequate theoretical account of standards: documented or tacit knowledge of standards; norm or criterion referenced grading; analytical or holistic judgement processes; and broad or local consensus on standards. It concludes that whilst a techno-rational perspective poorly represents the actual practice of standards in use, alternative, interpretivist accounts do not satisfy demands for reliability, transparency and fairness. It concludes by outlining an alternative framework for safeguarding standards: systematising a range of processes for learning about and safeguarding standards, particularly for new staff; reviewing the role and potential of documented standards; building staff awareness and assessment literacy; and establishing trust in standards by students and other stakeholders.