Susan Armstrong, School of Law UWS Assessment Forum June 2006 Responding to Assessment Challenges: Clarifying Standards in Criminal Law Susan Armstrong, School of Law UWS Assessment Forum June 2006

Survey 300 final year law students about their satisfaction with UWS law degree Satisfied with many things Not happy with assessment feedback timeliness or usefulness

Large Classes: Challenges Avoiding assessment that encourages shallow learning Providing high quality and prompt feedback Fairly assessing a diverse mix of students Coping with excessive marking loads Maintaining marking quality and consistency Monitoring cheating and plagiarism

Other factors Amalgamation of Parramatta and Campbelltown Law Schools in 2000 created challenges in ensuring cross-campus consistency Continuing challenges of providing sufficient support for casual staff, and ensuring marking consistency Constructive alignment project

So how did we Engage students in deep learning through relevant and challenging assessment tasks, and provide useful feedback about their performance on these tasks in a reasonable time frame? Without killing ourselves?

Quality No magic: responding to the challenges of large classes is about good practice in teaching and assessment; Research suggests that the quality of teaching and assessment are more important than class size; So assess less, but assess better.

Achieving clarity We need to be clear about what we want students to do why we want them to do it what we will be looking for Students need to be clear about what they have to do and demonstrate what will be rewarded

One response Criminal Law Compulsory first year unit Second semester LLB program, School of Law 150-200 students one campus Written Task: Analysis and Court Report 25%

Court Report and Analysis Observe Local Courts and District or Supreme Court Write a report and analysis Is the rhetoric of a fair trial, as set out in the High Court decision of Dietrich, matched by the experience of accused in the summary and higher courts of justice?

Task process Aligned with unit objectives: constructive alignment Develop capacity to critically analyse and apply legal principles Student scaffolding class discussing task specific written guidance feedback sheet

Feedback sheet: criteria CONTENT, ANALYSIS & STRUCTURE Identified elements of a fair trial Evaluated whether rhetoric is matched by reality Substantiated argument by: referring to commentators in text referring to arguments from research referring to Dietrich and cases which have applied referring to observations in summary courts referring to observations in higher courts Developed and sustained coherent, logical argument Demonstrated independent critical analysis

Clarifying standards How will we know students have achieved the learning outcomes and how well they have done this? What standards are we looking for? Describing student’s understanding as should be demonstrated in the task.

Describing understanding Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome: SOLO, Biggs, Teaching for Quality Learning at University , 1999 a systematic way of describing how a learner's understanding and performance grows in complexity when mastering many academic tasks Levels of understanding can be described as verbs in ascending order of cognitive complexity

A hierarchy of verbs: Biggs © Murdoch University and Biggs 1999

Clarifying standards An attempt to describe and grade expected learning outcomes Ensure assessment aligns with objectives Should facilitate consistency in marking Should assist precision in feedback Should promote more timely feedback

Reflection: for co-ordinator Constructive alignment – greater certainty students achieving objectives Significant set up time: but payback in clarity and speed of marking, transfer Greater consistency across staff Distribute marking workload, reduced need for post marking standardisation No appeals, fewer problems

Reflection: staff Clarified marking task, esp for casuals content and standard specified Achieved consistency across staff little need to adjust marks Assisted to return task within 2 weeks Enabled more detailed feedback could cross reference remarks to sheet

Reflection: for students Enabled greater precision for student feedback standards distributed via WebCt after student could understand why received grade No appeals and few complaints of student dissatisfaction with assessment and marking process

Next time Next time would formalise evaluation and write up results Did not have opportunity to repeat/transfer this specific task again Next time would provide standard sheet to students before submission Make guidelines simpler (?)

Responded to challenges More timely, useful assessment feedback Assessed less, but better