Week 4: Assessment

The theme of this week is assessment of international students.  It has been chosen because assessment brings together all the themes and topics from previous weeks.

Of course, assessment itself is a complex and frequently debated topic, whatever students' characteristics, and it relies upon good practice, which is itself widely discussed and debated.

To see one example of these generic good practice guidelines, have a look at David Nichol's 'Ten Principles of Good Assessment', listed under additional reading.

So, it is important to get assessment right for all students because assessment matters, but this week we will focus on issues which are especially important for teachers assessing international students and providing feedback to international students.

Underlying themes/principles

For many lecturers, assessing international students raises particular issues, and these have been alluded to in previous weeks on this course. Students' previous educational experiences, their language capability, their background knowledge, and their skills can all make assessment an especially stressful or demanding hurdle to jump.  For lecturers, questions which are often discussed in face-to-face workshops or programme planning meetings include:

1.  Standards?

Where should we draw the line between a pass and a failing grade?  What would count as 'good work' and can all students aspire to it?  Do we all mean the same thing by 'good work'?

2.  Academic writing?

In particular, referencing and plagiarism.  Should we expect all students to follow the rules for citation and attribution?  How much time and guidance should students have in learning the rules?  What should teachers do to be sure students know what is expected and how to meet those expectations? What penalties are fair when students breach the rules?

3. Feedback?

What feedback helps students?  How much?  How can we give it efficiently and fairly?

4. Fairness?

Should teachers give some students the benefit of the doubt, and if so, who?  In which circumstances?  Should teachers accommodate diverse student groups by changing what they assess, how they assess, or how they grade students' efforts?

We can only touch on these issues this week, perhaps alerting you to areas for future investigation.  This week, we will work together on scenarios based around these four questions, sharing reactions, suggestions and alternatives to managing relatively common assessment quandaries.

Reading

Suggested additional reading

Week 4 Activity

Three scenarios on assessment are designed to trigger your thinking.  You need not respond to all four; instead, choose one and post your response on the discussion board.

This activity is not so much a discussion as a format for showing alternatives, demonstrating the wide range of ways in which people manage these issues. Few are easy or clear cut.

1. A scenario on standards

This is a mixed cohort in a UK university with most of the students coming from outside the UK - from the European Union, from the Middle East, from India, South East Asia and from China.  The annual course review, covering all modules in the programme, shows that students' overall grades were in the 'high middle' of the range*.  However, analysis of some subgroups of students based on their nationality shows a more mixed picture.

Two subgroups, both from outside the UK, are significantly lower overall, with all students averaging just above or below the 'pass/fail' boundary. The top four students are all UK students.

* This is deliberately vague - many grading systems are probably used by participants on this online course.

2. A scenario on grades

A student writes her first essay in a UK university and says this about how she felt when her assignment came back from the teacher:

'I tried so hard but my grade was only 65%. I feel discouraged - I have always had 80% or higher. What to do? I do not know. What to do?'

3. Scenario on fairness

A teacher says:

'Normally, I assess this course by asking students to do a 15 minute presentation in pairs but this year, we have suddenly had an increase of 50% in the number of international students. So, with so many who have never done a presentation before and with so many who clearly find oral English very difficult, I have decided to cut the presentation out completely. I have asked for an individual poster of a mind map instead.'

Evaluating the course

Please complete the short survey: Course feedback questionnaire.

There is also a course evaluation discussion forum, which allows you to offer us more detailed feedback to help us improve the course, and illustrate it for future participants. We will only use this feedback in an anonymised form.

The course tutors will stop posting on Friday of week 4, but course participants will still have access to the course until the end of June, so do make sure to take copies of any of the course materials, or your course postings, that you would like to keep for future reference.