Marking for Student Learning

An essential part of assessment is marking or giving grades to pieces of work submitted by students - work that may or may not represent the true ability of the student. Given the importance of making the grade from a student’s point of view, can grades be utilised in order to support meaningful learning?

The Guidelines on Assessment at UWA state that

5.1 Formal assessment is an integral part of the teaching and learning process and as such should enhance effective learning and contribute, both short and long-term, to improved teaching.

6.8 Staff members - are normally expected to:

• give students a clear explanation of the grade they have awarded for any piece of work.

• help students to identify weaknesses apparent in their work and suggest approaches to remedying these.

The extent to which students benefit from grading is likely to depend on a number of factors including the method of marking.

Two common methods used in marking essay-type answers, as well as in arriving at a final grade for a unit or course, are criterion-referencing and norm-referencing. There are arguments for and against each of these methods. When a set of criteria is used, it gives the impression of being impartial, for marks are given irrespective of how others in the class performed. However, the criteria may be inappropriate, due for example to over- or under-expectation of the abilities of students or the difficulty of the questions. Norm-referencing allows flexibility in setting standards, but it also requires students to compete with one another in order to obtain high marks. Is it fair to insist on having a small proportion of students obtaining distinctions in each year when the proportion of high ability students may vary dramatically from year to year?

In preparation for this edition of ITL, a few UWA lecturers in different disciplines were asked about their methods of marking. Their responses indicated that there was a variety of ways of marking and a variety of ways of allocating marks. Apart from the type of assessment, marking tended to be different for the different units and different year levels. Final-year students in particular were expected to show a depth of conceptual understanding, a sense of originality, high organisational skills and clear explanations in their work. The importance of good writing skills was strongly evident in the lecturers' views. The lecturers were also aware of subjectivity in their marking and tried to increase reliability by re-reading the student scripts. Less stringent rules seemed to be used for marking first-year work, because of high student numbers. In some disciplines, there is only one correct answer to questions given to the early years and these answers are relatively easy to mark whereas later-year problems typically have a number of possible solutions.

A question rarely asked when marking is 'What are the student responses telling me about my teaching?'. Reflecting on this question might significantly inform future teaching practice.