A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Assessing student learning
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applied to assessment in arts and humanities subjects is an interesting question
for debate.
(Professor Chris Lawn, Queen Mary, University of London, based on work by
Dr Matthew Williamson, Educational and Staff Development)
The publishing of criteria should also be helpful if peer assessment is part of the overall
process. Peer assessment is often seen as unfair because students do not trust each other’s
judgements, worry about favouritism and friendship influencing marks, feel it is the
responsibility of the lecturer and so on. There are, however, many solutions to ensuring
that a group mark is fair to all, such as moderation by the lecturer, or estimation of each
individual’s contribution to the task where lower or higher than average contribution
alters the group mark for that particular student, by a pre-agreed number of marks. Other
psychometric solutions include having sufficient scores contributing to the overall mark
to reduce the effect of each mark, or using a system that discounts the one or two highest
and lowest scores. Whichever system you use, it is important to communicate to students
an awareness of their concerns about unfairness, and the steps that have been taken
to address them. Perhaps, though, the most effective way of using peer assessment is to
use it formatively so that students can be relieved of anxieties about the marks counting
and concentrate instead on the learning opportunities this process affords them (see also
Case study 1 in Chapter 22).
Peer and tutor dialogue would seem at first glance to be costly in terms of tutor
time, especially if this were to be carried out with each individual student, but Ramsden
(2003) is unequivocal that it is an essential professional responsibility. Many tutors are
happy to write feedback on assignments and then go through these on a one-to-one
basis if students make an appointment to see them. The advances in technology are
also enabling swifter, individualised feedback such as tablet PCs where tutors can write
on electronically submitted assignments, and audio blogs where the tutor records her
feedback and posts it on a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), so that students
can download and listen in their own time and convenience. The methods that suit will,
as Yorke intimates, be largely a question of disciplinary epistemology. In performancebased
subjects, for example, it is usual for the teacher to give feedback in class almost
continuously, and students are required to self-critique/assess as well as critique each
other’s work. In many science-based, medical and health-related subjects where skills
and competencies are routinely practised and assessed, feedback can also be given in this
manner.
3 Helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards)
Underlying this seemingly straightforward principle is a substantial literature around
assessment criteria which highlights the paradox between making the goal of the task
clear but at the same time making the performance of the task outweigh any actual learning
that takes place (Norton, 2004). This is particularly the case for strategic students who are