1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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?

6. 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.

7. 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

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

9. 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?

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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.

13. 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

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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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 (?)

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