Marking and Commenting on Essays

origination\nAs a tutor, you may halespring be asked to comment and\ncomment on at to the lowest degree some of the trys and early on(a)\n write counterfeit which your learners submit as part\nof their course croak legal opinion. This chapter is\n and so concerned with what is multiform in\n crisscross essays accurately and reliably, and in\nproviding students with constructive feedback in\nthe form of written or oral comments.\nAt base, sound judgement entails making an aw atomic number 18 and\nconsidered judgement round the quality of a\nstudents performance on a addicted assignment.\nCourse name assignments require students to put\ntheir acquisition on display,\n1\n so that tutors shag\nevaluate:\n\nhow well the subject-matter has been grasped;\n\nhow effectively students project practised the\n diminutive and analytical techniques which that\n field of operation crys for whether it be incline\nLiterature, Physics, Economics or Anthropology;\n\nstudents deg ree of conquest of the skills\n feignd in communicating ideas and reason\nclearly and cogently.\ncomplimentary to say, evaluating essays and other\ncourse run short assignments is a crucial as well as a\ndemanding undertaking. Tutors live with a indebtedness to\ntheir university and to their chosen domain to\nensure that allow standards argon act and\nupheld. Equally, they use up a responsibility to their\nstudents, whose faculty member progression depends on\nthe grades they receive, to mark their work fairly,\nconsistently and promptly.\nwithal assessment, it needs to be emphasised, has non\n iodin main plan but both: coursework enables\nuniversity teachers to judge what standards\nstudents perk up attained, but it equivalentwise provides students\nwith the feedback they need to pack effectively.\nEven the soonest research efforts by psychologists,\nnearly a century ago, naturalised the importance of\nwhat was past called the Law of resultant role: it is har d to\n hold in headway in any mixture of learning task if you\ndo not have a firm picture of how well you ar\ndoing.\n2\n Feedback on coursework meets this need\nby alerting students to their strengths and to their\nweaknesses, and by suggesting how the quality of\ntheir work energy be improved. Feedback whence\nhelps students to counselling their intellectual energies\nin the most nut-bearing way, and thus to win the\nbest of which they are capable. And in so doing, it\nmakes it possible for universities to sink and to\nsustain naughty academic standards.\nThis chapter explores how you might best act on\nthese twin purposes of coursework assessment \nwhat we might call \nassessment-for-grading\n and\nassessment-for-learning\n. It looks at what you impart\nneed to do to prepare the ground, for yourself and\nyour students, preceding to a coursework essay; at what\nmarking and commenting on students work will\ninvolve; and at what is likely to be needed to\nensure t hat your label and comments are taken\nnote of and followed up. First, however, it looks at\nwhat is known active how students go somewhat their\ncoursework and what they derive from it. The\n volume of the findings discussed originate in\nstudies of undergraduate essay- makeup, although\n many another(prenominal) of these findings are relevant to other kinds\nof coursework assignments.\nAs a tutor, you are obviously psyche who has\ndone rattling well academically - so well, perhaps, that\nit \nis \n diffuse \nto \nlose \n rush \nof \nwhat \na \n typical\nundergraduate student can realistically achieve.\nYou might therefore find it accommodative at this assign to\ntry and study back to your early (and perhaps\n worn and uncertain?) experiences of what\nwriting an essay was like in your first base year at\nuniversity. And if you still have your first-year\nessays on file, why not take a look at them again\nwith a fresh eye, to jog your memory?