I had 38 students in my final year option module this semester. I finished marking their exam scripts (for two thirds of the marks - one third come from an essay submitted in November) on Sunday afternoon. A colleague then took a sample of the scripts and second marked them, giving me them back yesterday and we had a discussion about overall standards (he agreed the marks for the scripts he had sampled).
But now that the exams secretary in my department has put the exam marks together with the essay marks I find that a number of students have ended up with a '9' mark - 69, 59 etc.
Given the UK classification system, and the way in which we decide degree classes in Sheffield, '9' marks are problematic. We could leave these as marks indicating a student performance that is genuinely on the cusp between two degree classes. But in my time as Pro-Vice-Chancellor I have had cases brought to me for final appeal where a student has ended up with a whole series of '9' marks for individual modules and no concerted discsusion has ever been had - by individual markers or by an exam board - as to whether a much clearer decision could be made, putting the student firmly into one class or another. I remember one case where almost every module taken by the student in their second and third year had ended with a '9' mark, and where tipping only a couple of those over to the next class would have made a difference to the student's degree class. Equally, moving a couple of marks down would have provided clarity that this student was at the top end of the lower group. But the student was left with the impression that everything had been done mechanistically and that there had been no discussion of his or her true merits to come to a sound judgement on overall standard. There was nothing wrong in regulations with what the department was doing (or not doing). But I suggested to them that they might change their procedures to give full consideration to candidates with such borderline performance - and that ultimately they should come up with a reasoned judgement for their final degree class recommendation rather than relying on a defence that 'that's what the numbers came out to.'
So tomorrow I will be taking all the students on my final year module whose prima facie outcome is a '9' mark and I will be looking again at the marking of all three components of their assessment. If they have got two Upper Second marks and one Lower Second, is that Lower Second of such a standard that it should not be compensated by the weight of Upper Second work? Has my judgement that an exam essay be given a mark of 78 been too generous against two solid performances in the Upper Seconds that have put the stduent overall on 69? After all, I am not certain that in a blind test I would assign the same mark in the 70s to a single essay if presented to me several times over an extended period.
Overall my view is that we owe it to our students to give them definite outcomes whenever we can - both at module and at degree level. There will be genuine cases that we leave on the border, but we should have given serious consideration as to why they are there. With a bit of reflection we can place most students very definitely.
But something else I have been doing this week is having discussions with colleageus elsewhere about the introduction of Grade Point Averages. Now that would have a different set of issues ...
No comments:
Post a Comment