Establishing criteria
Establishing criteria
Establishing effective assessment criteria requires a course team approach. Tutors must agree which qualities they expect from student work, what progress might look like across levels, and how different units build on each other. Working together as a team also ensures consistent language, which helps students apply feedback to future learning.
Key questions
- How many groups (tutors, students, employers...) are involved in the development of marking criteria?
- How well do the criteria reflect the qualities the whole team expects in students' work?
- What should progress look like across the different levels? How is this reflected in the language of the criteria?
- Do criteria on different modules use consistent language to help students apply feedback to future learning?
Solent best practice
Agreeing on standards
The English department's approach: “Built into every one of our units we have elements of this is how you can write a successful essay or research log. So we make it very clear, abundantly clear what a successful response to the task would look like. We show them a physical example. We give them workshops on it, so every lecturer deals with it, but as a team we all agree what we’re looking for, so we sing from the same hymn sheet. “
Creating consistent rubrics across a course
The BA Performance course team aim to ensure consistency in marking, without stifling creativity. In response to student concerns about subjectivity in marking, the team set out to align rubrics across modules.
Watch the first 5 minutes of the October 2018 livecast, where Maggie Tarver discusses how the team have gone about aligning rubrics and getting student input into rubric design.
Support at Solent
- Refer to the Solent grademarking scale when designing critieria.
- The quality team can provide guidance to ensure assignments meet requirements.
Tools and Resources
- B O'Donovan, M. Price and C Rust (2008) Developing student understanding of assessment standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches
- Lorraine Jones, Bill Allen, Peter Dunn and Lesley Brooke (2016) Demystifying the rubric: a five-step pedagogy to improve student understanding and utilisation of marking criteria.
- Heid. L Andrade and Ying Du (2006) Student perspectives on rubric-referenced assessments.