Developing Criteria & Standards and Learning Guides

UWS School of Law Retreat @ Manly

20-21 July 2009

GoalsBy the end of tomorrow you will have

• Reviewed your understanding of criteria and standards

• Begun or continued to work on developing, and hopefully finalised, criteria and standards for your unit assessment tasks

• Familiarised yourself with the aims and content of Learning Guides and begun to develop your unit Learning Guide

Why are we here?

UWS Assessment Policy - Criteria and Standards-Based Assessment

• Mac Collings

In the deep end

Marking letters of adviceRead:

• Learning outcomes & instructions to students

• Problem

• Marking guide

• Mark the letters using marking guide

What did you learn about criteria & standards?

What more do you need to know?

How to write criteria & standards

• Dr Graham Hendry, UWS Teaching Development Unit

Writing Criteria & Standards: DIY

DIY: You will need

• Unit learning outcomes• Assessment task description• A sense of what you want students to do

in the assessment task (criteria)• An idea of what poor, acceptable and good

work is (standards)

You may find useful • Examples of C&S developed for similar tasks• DIY guide to writing C&S• Examples of past student work for this task,

especially good examples

What have you learned so far?

What are the issues & challenges?

Continuing to DIY

Review • Graham Hendry

Review of criteria and standards1. What is the most important

understanding you will take away from today?

Review of criteria and standards2. What is the ‘muddiest’ issue you still

need to clarify?

Learning Guides

Learning Guides: UWS Policy

Unit Outline and Learning Guides Policy• Mac Collings

What are Learning Guides? What do they look like?

• Paul Parker, UWS Student Learning Unit

‘’But it’s not really user friendly’ Student perceptions of criteria &

standards and exemplars

Learning guides should include:

• 29(d) Annotated models of student essays or reports, or marking guides, to clarify expectations about what is required for assessment activities

What helped students learn?

students’ perceptions of the quality of guidance and feedback

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

Example:markingexerciseuseful for

completingtask

Examples:gave me

confidence

Examples:showed me

how

Individualwritten

feedbackhelped menext time

Ticks on marking

sheethelped menext time

Markingsheet

showed mehow

Whole-class

feedbackhelped menext time

Mea

n s

core

s

Examples

Feedback

Marking sheet

What guided students most?

perceptions of the quality of guidance

00.5

11.5

22.5

33.5

44.5

5

Examples:markingexercise

useful

Examples:gave me

confidence

Examples:showed me

how

Markingsheet: clearwhat wasexpected

Markingsheet: easy

tounderstand

Markingsheet:

confidentmarked

fairly

Markingsheet:

showed mehow

Guidance

Mea

n sc

ores

Examples

Mmarking Sheet

FY understanding of being a law student

Understandng of being a law student

62%

64%

66%

68%

70%

72%

74%

76%

Not know how toapproach the study of law

Not know how to do lawassessments

Found studying lawdifficult

Undersanding

% Series1

The exemplars

• Examples • illustrated language & structure of task• made expectations concrete• generated self confidence students were being

successful

• Marking exercise was rated most useful for • understanding how to complete the task• assisting to distinguish poor and good quality • especially helpful for first years who ‘don’t really

have that much of a concept.’

Marking sheet / guide

• Least helpful for knowing how to do the task• ‘But it’s not really user friendly’ • ‘congested’• expectations were clear, but abstract

• Reassured students were fairly mark (‘were for teachers’)

• But ticked sheets were helpful as feedback for next time

How will you clarify expectations about what is required for assessment

activities?

DIY Learning Guides You will need to include:

• Unit information

• Assessment information• Assessment instructions• Criteria & standards• Rationale for class learning activities• Exemplars or marking guides

• Learning resource information• Reading resources• Literacy resources• Citation conventions

Should we include anything else?

Review

Review1. What is the most important

understanding you will take away from today?

What is the ‘muddiest’ issue you / we still need to clarify?