Assessment & the Expanded text project

Self and Peer Assessment

1. Using self-assessment to improve student understanding of assessment criteria
2. Using peer assessment and the personal statement to improve independence of mind and originality of approach in interpretative and written practice
3. Using peer assessment to improve student understanding of bibliographical transmission

Using self-assessment to improve student understanding of assessment criteria

This practice varies student learning by using self-assessment. The practice aims to make the department's assessment criteria the direct subject of staff/student dialogue. Prior to the examination students completes a self-assessment of an essay. The self-assessment makes clear the relationship between the diagnostic and final assessment by highlighting the importance of breadth and depth of subject knowledge, including relevant contextual knowledge.

Assessment design: diagnostic essay (0 per cent), 2,000 word essay (50 per cent), two hour examination (50 per cent).
Sheffield Hallam University, level one, twenty credits
Unit title: Introduction to prose fiction

The course where this assessment design is practised aims to introduce students to the study of prose fiction using texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Students learn to recognise and interpret the range of literary forms and devices used by novelists. It makes the difference between reading as a pastime and reading as an academic exercise and the assessment rewards the student who has learned to select and judge.

The self-assessment performs several functions. It makes explicit the overall rationale for the department's approach to assessment and makes clear the relationship between the diagnostic essay and the final assessment. Since tutors also use the self-assessment sheet to grade the diagnostic essay, there is also evident consistency and openness in the demands made on students and the standards of judgement applied. The self-assessment form also provides feedback to these students on their progress.

For more detail about the style of self-assessment practised here see Assessment and the Expanded Text's case study on self-assessment.

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Using peer assessment and the personal statement to improve independence of mind and originality of approach in interpretative and written practice

Although the course where this assessment design is used is not taught within a Literature curriculum, it is structured around theoretical and issues based texts which are common to us. Here assessment is being used to underline the point that the experience of students themselves can help to structure and improve subject specific learning. This assessment makes student opinion its starting point. Tutor experience suggests that many students confuse the idea of criticism with being negative, shouting down. Equally, once students read an authoritative narrative such as Weber's on class, they feel unable to write their own. This assessment design closes the gap between theoretical text and student reader by involving the students at all stages of the course. The students are the ones to select the texts for study. They bring work to writing workshops and peer assess their colleagues. Implicit in this teaching, learning and assessment design is the belief that personal experience is a sound foundation for learning.

Assessment design: plan for personal statement (10 per cent), presentation on personal statement (10 per cent, peer assessed), 5,000­7,000 word critical statement (80 per cent).
University of East London
Unit title: Political philosophy

The unit encourages a close reading of texts in political and social philosophy. It provides a forum in which issues in political philosophy can be subjected to debate, and critical analysis in discussion and writing. Staff and students negotiate the texts for study and students are encouraged to read those texts without recourse to commentaries and secondary summaries of the text. Texts may be chosen to explore certain themes such as identity, women in philosophy, social contract, social justice etc. In the past students have selected texts by Mary Wollstonecraft, Marx and Weber amongst others. The format of the unit is a weekly one and a half hour seminar and an hours workshop plus two hours individual tutorial entitlement.

The main assignment is a personal statement. The students critically reviews his/her own position on a topic of his/her choice, with appropriate references to the present literature. The personal statement has to be word processed or typed, using standard footnote and bibliographic conventions.

Students are required to submit a plan for the personal statement by week nine of the semester and to make a presentation to the group on their statement in weeks eleven and twelve. In addition, each week a student makes an introductory presentation on an agreed text of about fifteen minutes which is followed by group discussion. There is also a weekly writing workshop devoted to planning the statement, exploring personal experience in writing, setting out an argument. Students and tutors read and comment on each other's work in progress.

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Using peer assessment to improve student understanding of bibliographical transmission

This two semester course focuses on the relationship between the written text of Shakespeare and performance (including issues of bibliographical transmission). Both the linguistic analysis and editing exercise are peer assessed and the student's mark depends partly on the level of insight and help displayed in marking their partners work.

Assessment design: Close linguistic analysis of a chosen extract from Shakespeare (10 per cent); editing a short passage from primary sources (10 per cent); portfolio of three or four short pieces of work including -- reviews of performances; creative writing; programme notes for actual or invented productions; essay on some aspect of the history of a chosen play -- total 4, 000 words (50 per cent). 2, 000 word essay comparing the dramatic techniques utilised in a Shakespeare play and any other play related to it (30 per cent).

Queen Mary and Westfield College, London University level 2/3

The tutor asks his/her students to complete a review in order to encourage the concept of drafting and redrafting in the light of criticism. This review is peer assessed and briefly 'marked' but the mark is not recorded. The students are at liberty to revise this review in the light of all comments received and to submit it (or not) as part of their portfolio.

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