Before the task: “The criteria used in marking have been clear in advance”

To what extent do students in your course have opportunities to engage actively with goals, criteria and standards before, during and after an assessment task? Instead of simply publishing the assessment criteria in your course handbook or on the web why not schedule time in lectures and tutorials for dialogue, questions and clarification. Encourage students to actively explore criteria and standards by:

  • Asking students to reformulate the question or other criteria in their own words as part of their submission
  • Providing examples of previous work to stimulate discussion – different examples spanning differing levels of achievement can be used to illustrate standards
  • Asking students to self-assess their own work before submission, using the same criteria as the teacher, perhaps as a cover sheet attached to an essay
  • Encouraging students to decide what they think is important in the task and collectively formulate new criteria

 

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