On the 18th November 2024, BILT and the Bristol SU held their second collaborative event of the year.
Following on from working in partnership to explore notions of feedback at the RepCon event, this second event explored more in terms of developing shared understandings of marking criteria and ways to collectively enhance the value of feedback, particularly in connection with the Bristol Skills Profile.
Hosted at Senate House by Bristol SU Sabbatical Officers Mia Stevens and Gurvin Chopra, the two sessions set out to consider:
- What approaches are being taken across the university to improve experiences of marking criteria, particularly in terms of understanding the issues and exploring how to develop systems and cultures to enhance this area.
- Sharing potential training materials on feedback engagement and seeking expertise to refine and develop these to co-create a programme of activities for students for January 2025 onwards (connected to the Bristol Skills Profile)
Session 1 – exploring marking criteria
In the first session, students and staff explored current understandings of marking criteria.
Following this, activities focussed on looking at school-level adaptations of the university-wide marking criteria, as well as considering the different categories which form the basis of the marking criteria.
Professor Sheila Amici-Dargan from the School of Biological Sciences shared some of the work which her school is developing to help enhance student engagement and understanding of marking criteria.
One instance included sharing some of the work developed on marking guidelines, glossaries and examples. The structure of these were created by Dr Bex Pike as were the themes and the criteria within the themes. A broader team of Dr Rose Murray, Professor Kerry Franklin, Professor Innes Cuthill and Dr Andy Wakefield were involved in developing the levels and descriptors, and Professor Ann Pullen and Dr Peter Brennan offered oversight on the design of these.
What were some of the key findings from this part of the event?
- Most students commented that they had not seen the university-wide marking criteria
- Most students indicated that they were not aware of the progression of the marking criteria between different levels
- PGT students particularly expressed the challenges of engaging with the marking criteria in a ‘compressed’ period of time
- Most students felt that where a new skill was introduced at a new level, it benefited them when staff explored this in its application to their assessments
- Most students felt it was important to operationalise and demonstrate what some of the key qualifiers meant, for example, what does ‘complex’ mean in regard to Level 6?
- All students suggested that teaching and learning activities are critical to deconstructing and demystifying the marking criteria
Session 2 – engaging with feedback as a graduate attribute
Creating an effective feedback culture is a collaborative goal across the institution. One of the ways in which this collaboration hopes to realise this is through developing the connection between feedback engagement as a form of critical reflection, and the recognition that ‘critical reflection…is a professional imperative’ (McKay 2008). Connecting feedback engagement activities with the Bristol Skills Profile is a plan to coordinate and share approaches at faculty-level.
In groups, participants discussed the possible applications and adaptations of different activities within the Developing Engagement with Feedback Toolkit (DEFT) and how these can be introduced in feedback engagement workshops later in the year. Discussion also considered what types of feedback activities and scaffolding are best-suited to different disciplinary areas.
Reflections and next steps…
There was real engagement and collaboration throughout the workshop. In reflecting on the event, Mia Stevens, UG Education Sabbatical Officer, considered that:
“Getting to talk with students from a range of disciplines and levels of study about their experiences with marking criteria really helped to illuminate which aspects we can collaborate with the university to improve on. For example, dedicating time in seminars and lectures to deconstruct and demystify the language of criteria. For me, this session truly demonstrated the value of co-creation. The more students can actively participate in the production of criteria, the more we can effectively use, understand and interrogate its outputs.”
Whilst Gurvin Chopra, PG Education Sabbatical Officer, highlighted that:
“The feedback workshop was extremely insightful, in particular it was helpful to understand that the University marking criteria varies from each year. As such, whilst a student may think a 65 in first and second year is the same grade, in reality that student has made progress without being aware of it.”
We’ll be aiming to continue our collaboration in the next part of the academic year, with more events, student engagement activities and development of a university-wide assessment and feedback network.
If you’d like to be involved, or see how the project develops, you can join the mailing list using this link.
References
McKay, E.A. (2008). Reflective practice: doing, being and becoming a reflective practitioner. Skills for Practice in Occupational Therapy. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd
