INCLUSIVE ASSESSMENT IN THE
SCIENTIFIC CURRICULA
Dr Kimberley Bennett
Mr Sebastian Stevens
Who’s who?

Dr Kimberley Bennett (kimberley.bennett@plymouth.ac.uk)
 Lecturer/
Deputy program leader in Marine Biology
 Module lead ‘Biology and Physiology of Marine
Vertebrates’

Mr Sebastian Stevens (sebastian.stevens@plymouth.ac.uk)
 Associate
Lecturer
 Research Assistant
Introduction



Improving inclusivity through the use essays as
summative assessment
Testing the benefits of formative peer review in the
scientific curricula
Encouraging all students to engage with essay writing
support
What’s the problem with essays?

Some students at third year still struggle with:
 Introduction
(Start broad and narrow down)
 Constructing
 Providing
critical review
 Concluding
 Reading
arguments
effectively
widely to provide a balanced review
Why does the problem arise?



Students were getting no ‘feedforward’ (inc from peers )
Students want formative feedback across programme/
earlier in academic year
Essays may benefit a limited number of thinking styles
Inclusivity and thinking styles



People have different thinking styles (Sternberg 1994)
Traditional assessment and teaching methods benefit
particular thinking styles
Flexibility within an assessment and varying type of
support available should benefit more students by
involving a greater range of thinking styles
Essays benefit specific thinking styles
Requirements
Corralling information
Working alone
Organising tasks and logic of
argument
Synthesis and analysis
Seeing the big picture
Focussing on detail
Works well for students who are:
 Conservative
(prefer traditional
approaches)
 Internal (Like to work alone)
 Local (deal with details, specifics
and concrete examples)
 Global ( see generalities)
 Executive (like to be given
structure)
What can we do about it?

Maximise creativity, ownership and motivation
Give wide choice in titles
 Make titles flexible


Maximise creativity, ownership and motivation
Students must write an article for publication
 Mimic academic peer review process



Provide support to help students with structure
Provide support that targets wider range of thinking styles
Liberal (prefer new approaches)
 External (prefer interaction)
 Legislative (like to be creative)
 Judicial (like evaluation)

The Research

Teaching Fellowship Award (PedRIO)

Formative Peer Review

Writing Workshops

Questionnaire

Voluntary
What was the assessment?

Review article on a ‘group’ of their choice in one of up to
4 areas:
 cardiovascular
adaptation;
 conservation status;
 nutritional requirements and energy balance
 human impacts

Peer review

Sign up in term 1/ Hand in term 2
Writing Workshop


Discursive
Help with structure of essay writing using examples
and specific tips and tricks e.g.:
 Start
with why we care
 Use short sentences
 End introduction defining aims and scope

Peer review
 What
is the role of a peer reviewer?
 What ‘counts’ as helpful feedback
 How should you respond?
Participation in the study
Questionnaire only
All students in the study (N=36)
1
27
Peer Review only
3
5
Writing Workshop only
Both Peer Review and
Writing Workshop
Results: peer review was helpful
Of the students who took part in the peer review process:

85.7% received helpful suggestions to improve their essay

96.4% felt that they received fair comments on their work

92.1% felt that receiving peer feedback was helpful

92.8% felt that giving peer feedback was helpful

87.0% of students who took part in peer review saw
improvement between their submitted draft and the final
essay.
Results: the workshop was helpful
Of the students who took part in the writing workshop:




100% felt that they could now better structure their
essays
100% felt that they could now write a better
introduction
96.3% felt that they could now write a better
conclusion
96.3% felt that they could now evaluate and critique
literature more effectively.
Impact on Summative Results



Crude measure with many underlying factors
Correlation between attendance at one or more
support interventions and a rise in assignment grade
Strong influence of previous high achievers taking part
in the support interventions, with more lower achievers
disengaged.
So why didn’t some students participate?

Of the 74 students in the cohort, 27% did not participate
in any of the interventions
 7%
(N=5) of the non participators completed a questionnaire
and explained why they did not participate
 20%
(N=19) did not participate or tell us why
Qualitative Survey Responses: Identified
barriers to participation

Time management
 Early
 Too
hand in for peer review
many hand in’s at one time

Lack of confidence in providing feedback

Lack of confidence in feedback from a classmate
 Some
students felt that they only wanted feedback from a
professional
Solutions: overcoming barriers



Time management on the part of students

Earlier sign up and peer review deadline to give more time

Avoid deadlines from other modules
Lack of confidence in ability to provide feedback

Explain the value and importance of peer feedback and demonstrate satisfaction
scores for last year

Provide extra support in giving feedback: workshop with Learning Development
earlier in academic year
Lack of confidence in feedback from a classmate

Show improved final grades for those students that have had their draft essay
reviewed by a peer

Supporting students to give feedback that provides suggestions for improvement
Targeting the ‘unknowns’



Our interventions help students with external, judicial,
executive and legislative thinking styles
Students who are more internal and conservative may
dislike the approaches offered
Additional help is made available:
 List
of alternative sources ie. ‘writing café; learning
development one-to-one tutorials
Q
and A forum on Moodle
Conclusion
Students said that the workshop and peer review were
worthwhile and should be embedded earlier in their
programme
The interventions appear to positively impact on summative
results
Students receive formative feedback (feed forward) in line
with university policy and inclusivity agenda
How can we target students who don’t participate but don’t tell
us why? (make it compulsory; e-feedback?)
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
The average difference in essay grade between taking
part in both peer review and the writing workshops
compared with taking part in nothing was 11.72%
Students who took part in
something had an average
grade of 64.75%
N
Average Essay
Percentage
(Std.dev)
Average Essay
Grade
Cohort Participators
54
64.75 (11.28)
B
Both Peer review and
Workshop
39
65.97 (11.86)
B
Workshop Only
10
63.40 (10.46)
B-
Peer Review Only
5
58.2 (6.02)
C+
Cohort NonParticipators
20
54.25 (12.79)
C
Total
74
61.88 (12.55)
B-
Students who took part in
nothing had an average
grade of 54.25%