New academics’ experiences of assessment & feedback Rachel Sales Department of Nursing and Midwifery

Race, Brown and Smith (2005:xı). “Nothing we do to, or for our students is more important than our assessment of their work and the feedback we give them on it. The results of our assessment influence our students for the rest of their lives and careers – fine if we get it right, but unthinkable if we get it wrong” Race, Brown and Smith (2005:xı).

Do you remember the first time you marked?

Marking …. Is “the most significant quality event in the lives of students and academics” (Flemming, 1999:83) , Can be an emotional burden for lecturers as they bring “a great deal of themselves to the process” (Hand and Clewes, 2000:12), Can be regarded as a chore (Smith and Coombe, 2006), Is to be avoided as “Most lecturers would rather be doing research than assessing. Some would rather be cleaning out drains” (Anon 2011 @brookes.ac.uk).

Methodology: interpretative phenomenology Purposive sampling recruited: six newly appointed academics Method: semi structured interviews Interviews transcribed verbatim. Thematically analysed Research Process The aim of the study was to explore the experience of six newly appointed academics from health and social care backgrounds.

Themes

Responsibility “I was quite terrified because of the responsibility. Not having training and not really knowing what I was doing but the responsibility of actually, this is someone’s future that I am looking at. If I say yeh or nay to the bit of paper where does go from here? That has got easier as the time has gone on. I can quite obviously pick up a piece of work which is appalling and I quite obviously pick out a piece of work which is really good. Still a bit of difficulty around the middle stuff.” (2.3.160/2.3.161/2.3.162)

The one mark “there was one that stuck out, there was one that was a seventy five, they’d given them a forty four, right now this person has nine years’ experience, and I have six months so we had a chat and in the end the person ended up getting quite a high sixty, and they went on its been one of those bad days where I just read them, and I wasn’t really concentrating, and …now that you’ve pointed this out, and I was sat there thinking, and we did this on the telephone, what do you mean you’re having a bad day, if you were this person only first marker, that person would have only got forty four”. (6.2.85/6.2.86/6.2.87/6.2.88/6.2.89/6.2.90) THE cover - 18 September 2008 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=403612

Time “I just think all of the paperwork that has been put in front of me and you want to do this and you need to do that and don’t do this and don’t do that and, you know, so far I have not been able to achieve half of what people have sort of said to me but I just think it will come. You know it will be done, I got a list of what I need to do, prioritise same as on the ward, you prioritise and that can change from one hour to another you may have to change your priorities and that is how I look at it, if it gets done, it gets done, but sometimes it won’t get done and as long as it is not an essential” (1.1.42/1.1.43/1.1.44/1.1.45).

Conflict “I think it is very understandable “cause you are what you do, aren’t you? You know marking on one level it is a task and is very un-emotive, on the other hand marking is about your judgement, your preferences, you putting yourself your stamp of approval and acceptance on something and your making your own personal public. So if someone else says “well actually, I think you are about 20 marks out” that is harsh, it feels harsh to that person, it is the same way it would, you know, if I passed an essay and someone said “this is fail, what were you thinking?” you know I would be, oh my god, really, show me, show me, but I suppose it is a different reaction isn’t ‘oh my god show me show me’ is quite a different reaction to ‘how very dare you question my authority?” (5.3.138/5.3.139).

Empathy with students “you don’t want to let down a student, but equally you’ve got a set of guidelines which is really useful whenever you think Oh I’m not quite sure, you can always go back to the guidelines and go back through everything yep have they achieved, is that in there umm but still I think there’s an emotional attachment I think I think I was in that position once but then you must become unemotional if that makes any sense so I did tend to read them three times each one the first time marking I read everyone three times. To make sure I was being quite fair the first time I could tell you know that it was quite emotional by the end of the third I have whittled it down now” (1.1.12/1.1.13/1.1.14/1.1.15/1.1.16).

Volume of marking “I get the impression that it just turns up on your desk when people think you’re ready they just put the scripts and off you go” (6.1.2), “it just kind of turns up on the desk mysteriously” (6.1.4), “It’s the impression I get (laugh) they just miraculously appear everyone has a grumble about it and they do it” (6.1.13), “It’s like Harry Potter isn’t?… Harry Potter… yeh.. When all the letters come in because Hedwig the owl has not delivered all the letters” (6.1.15),

Feedback “I think the feedback is more of a challenge, and I know I have still got some way to go as far as providing a good piece of feedback, but the feedback is, as well you know, it is an area that I am really, really interested in, and it never ceases to amaze me the power of feedback and, umm, both the positive power of positive feedback and the negative power of negative feedback and I have, you know, and I have had to deal with practitioners that have been victims of negative feedback out in practice and you know I have come across some students that are picking up on the negative so I am really, really interested in that and it is an area that I would like to try and get right when it comes to feeding back from a really important piece of work” (3.3.64).

Assessment and Marking - what the papers say Lost in transition

How do you support new staff in your modules?

References Anon (2012) Assessing Students' Work. [online] Available from: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/firstwords/fw22.html [accessed 01.08.12].   Hand, L. and Clewes, D. (2000) Marking the Difference: an investigation of the criteria used for assessing undergraduate dissertations in a business school. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 25 (1) pp. 5-21. Flemming, N. (1999) Biases in marking students’ written work: Quality? In: Brown, S. and Glasner, A. (1999) Assessment Matters in Higher Education: Choosing and using Diverse Approaches. Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. pp. 83-92 Race, P. Brown, S. and Smith, B. (2005) 500 Tips on assessment: 2nd edition, London: Routledge. Smith, E. and Coombe, K. (2006) Quality and Qualms in the Marking of University Assignments by Sessional Staff: An Exploratory Study. Higher Education. 51 (1), pp. 45-69.

New academics’ Experiences of assessment & feedback Thank you Rachel Sales Department of Nursing and Midwifery