FACULTY OF BRAIN SCIENCES
Improving assessment literacy skills in undergraduate
Psychology students using an Honours and GPA
grading system
Dr Julie Evans, Dr Alastair McClelland & Dr Alice Cai
Background
Methodology
Although the vast majority of students are satisfied with the BSc
Psychology programme overall (95% - NSS 2014) ‘Assessment
and Feedback’ is one area where satisfaction is somewhat
lower (74% - NSS 2014)
We ran a focus group with students from all years of the BSc
Psychology programme, using the existing criteria as the start
point for discussion
We believe that part of the explanation for this may lie with the
current marking descriptors (or rubric) given to students at the
start of the programme, and also used by staff when grading
the students’ written work
We believe the current marking scheme:
Ø Lacks transparency – and fails to specify each of the
marking criteria adequately
Ø Is too generic – not designed for a specific form of
assessment (e.g., an essay vs. a laboratory report)
Thus students may not understand the criteria, nor find them
helpful, and in particular, are unable to use them in order to
improve their writing skills (and therefore their grades)
Using the information obtained from the focus group, and
utilizing best practice from the assessment and feedback
literature, we generated new marking criteria
In two further focus groups, staff discussed the new criteria
which were revised in light of their comments
Outcomes
The new marking scheme ranges from grade A+ to F. Content
and Structure & Writing are assessed on three dimensions:
Accuracy & Relevance, Analysis & Understanding and
Originality. The criteria presented in the A+ category indicate
what an exemplary essay should contain. The points in each of
the grade categories below indicate criteria that need to be
improved on in order to move up a grade level.
Aims
Using a student-led approach, and a GPA framework,
increase marking transparency and objectivity by creating
clear and useful descriptors within marking schemes (rubrics)
for specific forms of assessment
Why GPA?
UCL is highly likely to pilot a GPA assessment framework in
the near future. This will require more refined criteria than is
currently the case as there is much greater granularity in the
GPA than in the current Honours scheme:
Student responses
“I can’t see why students are
not already provided with
this kind of information.
Students should be provided
with all of this because none
of us have seen this level of
detail”
“The criteria made the 80’s grade and the
upper boundaries more accessible to us”
Conclusions
A student-lead – focus group approach – was found to be an
effective method of:
Ø Eliciting opinions on the existing scheme
Ø Identifying themes and generating criteria to use in the
construction of a new marking scheme (rubric)
Students were in main very positive about the new, more
explicit, and far more detailed, marking criteria
This project was funded by a SLMS Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant