This time last year I complained that although I had spent a very long time marking the projects submitted by my final year students, and had written a lot of supportive feedback on them, when I gave them the chance to reflect on my comments many of them only wanted to look at the final mark and then walk away.  As I made clear after various comments had been posted by readers, this was a summative piece of coursework, and formative feedback on a draft had been available prior to the work being submitted.

This time I have done something different.  I offer it up for others to comment on.

It takes me about 30 minutes to read and comment on a 2500 word project.  In producing my comments this year I wrote a lot (as usual) - both as marginal comments throughout the script, and as a final set of comments with recommendations to all stduents on who they might improve. (I think it's important to do that for everyone, even if they have already reached a high standard.)  This year I did not add a final mark to the script.

I then gave all students their essays back, along with a small slip of paper.  They had to collect the essays in class according to their registration number, since I did not have their names.  I gave them 15 minutes during which time they had to read through all my comments.  And I told them that I would only give them the mark for their essay once they had handed in the slip of paper with the mark that they expected to have been awarded in the light of the comments they had received. 

My rationale in doing this was to get them to think further about criteria for assessment, and the relationships between the extnet to which one meets the criteria and the final mark.  If they had not understood what I was getting at with my comments there would be a very low correlation between their expected mark and the actual: if they HAD understood my comments then there would be a clsoe relationship.

One student gave her/himself 41 when the actual mark was 61. I suspect that was because although I had been critical of the standard of presentation the content had been good, and the student concerned misunderstood the overall criteria.   Only two students were brave enough to award themselves firsts (the higher at 72) when in fact there were half a dozen firsts in the group of 36 students, with the highest mark at 84.

But overall there was a very high degree of correlation between their marks and mine.  With the exceptions of the cases I've just mentioned, everyone was within 5 marks of the mark awarded.  And the general feeling was that this was a good way of making students think further about the marking process, and what they can learn by considering the feedback given.

I'd be interested in others comments on this.