Case Study : Exam Feedback: Individual and Generic
Abstract
Exam feedback can be considered to fall into two areas; individual feedback on a student’s own performance in an exam; and generic feedback
on previous years’ students’ performance to help improve the performance and satisfaction of following years’ cohorts.
Individual opportunities to receive feedback on exam performance could be available to all students. In practice, third year students, who have
passed their exams, are very unlikely to take advantage of the opportunity. However, first and second year students could be provided with
feedback on the strengths and areas for improvement on their performance.
Of wider application is the opportunity to provide generic feedback to subsequent years’ students. This could be built into the exam setting and
marking process and into course handbooks and teaching schedules. This project primarily focused on piloting an approach to achieving this,
using De Montfort’s 2011 HIST 2002 exams as the test-bed.
Key words: examination feedback, dialogue
Context
Project rationale (link to pedagogic research)
Subject: Historical & Social Studies
Provide exam feedback for 1st and 2nd years to improve performance
in the final year: focusing on longitudinal approaches to facilitate
improvement.
Level: 2
Number of students: 40
Format: (e.g. seminar)
HIST 2002: The Transformation of Modern Britain since 1939
is a traditional lecture and seminar course, which also includes
a primary source project.
Assessment is by 3 written assignments of coursework and an
exam.
Provide an opportunity for generic feedback to subsequent years’
students by integrating an earlier and increased student awareness
of exam criteria.
A strategic approach built into a manageable staff workload.
Initiative outline
Implementation advice (including resources)
The programme of work involved in carrying out this project was as
follows:
Copies of previous years’ exam papers could be included in course
handbooks, but with a note if the exam will have changed due to changes
in the course content or tutors teaching the course.
preparing questionnaires for students covering issues including the
exam process, preparation, feedback and suggestions for
improvements;
analysing the questionnaire responses from HIST 1014 and HIST
2002 students using Survey Monkey;
organising and running two focus groups for HIST 2002 students to
discuss their attitudes to exams;
drafting example answers of varying quality for typical question in
the HIST 2002 exam and discussing them in class;
The last two teaching weeks of courses could be used for exam
preparation (as opposed to ‘revision’) sessions, with students having a say
in how part of the time is used. Tutors can promote in advance the value
of exam preparation and feed-forward sessions.
Research evidence can be presented to students, demonstrating that
exam performance is broadly in line with coursework performance and that
coursework performance is broadly in line with attendance levels. This can
help to dispel the idea that exam performance is significantly affected by
luck.
summarising feedback on exam performance in HIST 2002 for
students who sat the exam and for next year’s cohort;
The mechanics of exam marking should be explained to students,
including the role of independent external examiners.
offering individual student feedback sessions on exam performance,
on request;
Students should be given an opportunity to air and share their fears and
concerns about exams.
Students could be given feed-forward on last the year’s cohort’s
performance in the exam for the course. Overall comments on the
success of students taking each of the questions in last year’s exam would
be useful, including average marks achieved for each question and
highlighting common errors and any questions where students consistently
had problems.
Exemplar answers of differing quality could be used as a teaching tool,
getting students to rate the answers, then revealing the tutor’s mark and
reasoning.
Students could be offered optional individual tutorials on exam
performance at the start of the following academic year, but specifying in
advance that the exams are marked with limited comments. Realistically,
the proportion of students actually likely to take up the offer may be quite
low.
The following further suggestions, with wider implications, could also be
considered:
Each student could receive an email with their mark for each exam
question and a copy of the comments of the examiner.
On request, students could be provided with individual feedback on their
exam performance over two years, to identify on-going weaknesses.
A further study could monitor the subsequent exam performance of those
students who requested exam feedback, to identify changes in
performance compared to the cohort as a whole.
Students could benefit from completing learning logs during the academic
year on a greater number of courses.
Benefits for teaching and learning
Improving student satisfaction with the feedback from exams;
Improving student awareness of their individual strengths and areas for improvement within exams taken;
Providing earlier student awareness of the typical content and format of exams and greater student understanding of the rationale for including
exams among the assessment methods, marking practices and opportunities for feedback;
Improving student selection of exam questions and strategies for answering;
Creating greater staff awareness of students’ issues with exams;
Improving exam setting strategies;
Testing methods of implementation, which could be applicable to other courses;
Troubleshooting tips
In order to increase the attendance levels in these weeks, it would help by avoiding bunching coursework deadlines in the last two weeks of
term. Some exam preparation exercises could be interspersed into the earlier weeks of the course, when attendance levels are likely to be
higher.
Minimum attendance requirements at lectures and seminars could be set. Compulsory, but not assessed, seminar presentations could be
scheduled for the weeks when attendance could otherwise be expected to be lower.