Leading Enhancement in Assessment and Feedback in Medical Sciences

1. Leading Enhancement in Assessment and Feedback in Medical Sciences Hazel Marzetti: hazel.marzetti@ed.ac.uk Neil Lent: n.lent@ed.ac.uk

2. Aims • To gain a birds eye view of the programme • To understand students’ experiences • To identify excellent practice within the department

3. Context • Accounting and finance • Applied Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare • Ancient History • Biological Sciences • Biomedical Sciences • Business • Chemistry • Classics and Classical Studies • Computer Science and Informatics • Economics • Engineering • European Languages, Literatures and Cultures • History • Mathematics • Physics • Veterinary Medicine

4. Methodology

5. Headline Findings • 84% of students either satisfied or very satisfied with assessment and feedback (51 students). • There were however 4 distinct areas for improvement: • Assessment methods • Marking consistency • Clarity of assessment expectations • Approach to feedback

6. Assessment expectations • They didn’t really say what they’re trying to achieve using this assessment method, or using this type of test. They don’t really say, okay, we want you to know this. This is why we’re doing this. [lab test] • I’m realising now, I must have interpreted it [the assessment guidance] completely differently. My marker must’ve been like, what?

7. Suggestions • Continue providing written expectations in advance • Provide opportunities to work with assessment expectations and marking criteria • Peer marking – facilitate discussion of drafts or plans of students’ work in advance of the assessment • Encourage students to make individual appointments to discuss assessed work with staff.

8. Marking Consistency • Marking is so subjective, it depends on what mood the person is in, how many other papers they’ve marked, and how many other ones that they didn’t like, and now they’re in a bad mood, and ... I just feel like it needs to be more standardised. • I can never really tell, like, how much you can transfer that feedback to other essays, because of the whole difference between the courses, so I do find that is a bit difficult, still.

9. Suggestions • Increasing confidence in the moderation and/or second marking process through clear communication • I struggle to imagine that a second marker would’ve read my first feedback and thought that’s appropriate. • Communicating clearly within the department about what is expected of students • Ensuring that student understand fully what is expected of them because….

10. Negative Cycle

11. Approach to feedback • I wasn’t expecting to get feedback being, like, ‘whoa, let me just publish it, that was amazing’. But I was really proud of it. So, I was disappointed with the mark, but it wasn’t the end of the world, but the feedback, it sounded like my marker was really annoyed at me. Like, I was reading my feedback, and I was like, it sounded as if my marker really thought that I hadn’t put a lot of work into it, and it was really obvious I had, like, it really was. • It was on a Turnitin, and you had a little comment box, and I had, like, rhetorical questions, like obviously I’d made a statement, then I’d got, ‘is it?’ and that’s not feedback. I was so angry. So, I went and spoke to her, and she did give me feedback, and she said, ‘Oh, yes, this feedback wasn’t that great’

12. Suggestions • Give feedback with empathy • Focus on providing feedback that will allow students to both understand their grade and give them actionable feedback for their next piece of work. • Provide face to face feedback. • Ask students what they would like feedback on, with reference to future work they know is coming up and provide feedback around specific issues identified.

13. Assessment methods • I feel like exams are weighted too much, just because I do find I’m just not an exam person. I’ll do ok, but I think it’s just in my head, I just can’t get it out because of the stress of the exam. I’m just not in a great condition. • When an exam is, like, 70% of a course mark, I’m just like, that doesn’t make any sense, because I feel like assessment, you should be assessed more on your continuous work throughout the semester, rather than just a two hour period where you have to regurgitate everything that you’ve memorised, or you slightly understand, or you really understand it, but it’s still about, like, how much you remember, and actually regurgitating, it’s not like ... Because, somebody could memorise something in, like, a week, come in, say it all, and literally get, like, amazing, and the someone who understands everything, and who’s done really well on coursework, and who’s showed their understanding, could come in and achieve, bomb the exam, but then the exam is the biggest weight of your grade.

14. Suggestions • Review whether exams are the most appropriate method of assessment • If they are review whether they should be worth 60% or more • Explore other methods of coursework based assessment that could be used as an alternative

15. Compare to NSS • Free text comments more positive than negative. • Areas students felt could be improved were: • Feedback • Organisation • Assessment • Departmental culture

16. Take away messages • Staff’s expertise, supportive nature, and enthusiasm is a major perk of the degree programme. • Staff may consider: • Reviewing the assessment methods to check that exam is the best primary method of assessment • Finding out about the other courses students are taking and ensuring that feedback will be useful to the assessed work for these • Provide more opportunities for students to play with assessment and marking criteria before final summative assessments • Increase confidence around second marking and moderating processes