- Feedback refers to the information tutors give you about your work - either as written comments on e.g. essays or in discussion with them.
This information is designed to help you know what you are doing well and what you need to improve.
- Assessment refers to the marks awarded by your tutors. It is important to know which pieces of work are formally assessed (i.e. count towards your final degree) and what weight they carry. You need to have a clear idea of the percentage of your degree each formally assessed (including exams) piece of work carries and what grades you have achieved.
Some schools use 1 first degree grades 2 upper second 3 lower second 4 third 5 pass 6 fail Others may use the A - F system - with a similar significance.
- Most formally assessed work occurs after the first 2 or 3 terms of a course - but check this from your school information.
- Course directors have overall responsibility for monitoring student progress, but tutors will give you more immediate feedback - on the pink slips (per term/year) which refer to particular courses and give you grades based on essays, term work, exams etc.
- Normally, tutors or personal tutors will warn you if your work is not up to standard in a particular area. They should suggest why it is inadequate and what you should do to improve it. You should also know the relative importance of that topic area with regards your overall degree assessment.
- Students are adults, so if you are concerned about your grade and your tutor does not raise the matter with you, then it is up to you to raise the matter with him/her so that you can discuss which tactics to adopt.
- Another important point to consider is how you are placed within your group, so that you can compare your performance with others and have an idea of what the average grade for the group is and the average grade given by a particular tutor - some are stricter than others.
This is important to give you an idea of the general standard of the group and the general standard of particular tutors.
- However, if you do go to your tutor about a low grade, do not protest that it should be higher. The tutor is the expert, not you. Do ask for advice about how you can improve your grade, but do read carefully any comments your tutor has made on your written work, as he or she may have already made suggestions, before you talk to him/her. At this point, you should only pay a personal visit to ask for clarification - if you do not understand the comments.
- 'Informal' assessment
It is sometimes the case that pieces of work which do not count towards overall degree assessment are set. These are usually important pieces of work set to help guide you in your study and should not be ignored. They often help in the preparation of larger, more serious pieces of work for examination topics, and in any case, give you practice in understanding the requirements for academic standards. They might be in the form of exercises or short essays. Although these may be assessed only by a comment, this feedback normally is available prior to the formally assessed projects/term essays etc. These pieces of work give you the opportunity to have feedback, learn what is required before the pressures of formal assessments which count, and can give you important guidance. They are useful in the learning process.
- Learning from Assessment
All grades/comments should be grist to the mill - the objective should be to learn from them. If you were disappointed with your grade, learn what went wrong, put it behind you and think how you can do better next time. A 'not so good' grade gives you the opportunity to improve (which is what tutors look for). If you got a good grade - then keeping up the standard can also be a problem.
Categories of reasons for low grades for essays
It may be helpful for you (and your tutor) to try to think in terms of factors which may have caused you problems. For example with regards essays:
- Choice of topic
- too wide - lack of focus
- not enough available resources - therefore superficial treatment
- not linked adequately to lecture courses or tutorials
- Information content
- inaccurate
- insufficient [beware of personal anecdotal information used to make main points]
- irrelevant to argument
- Logical structure
- question not answered (or no issue clearly raised to be discussed, no clear objectives)
- lack of clarity/confused thinking/no clear layout/form
- illogical arguments - or unclear links
- lack of adequate references to sources - or unclear which concepts are personal, which are part of a theory etc.
- lack of adequate definitions - concepts, theories and how they are interpreted/which interpretation and how it is used for the purpose of your argument
- little or no evidence to support your argument - either because you did not know of any existing evidence or because you knew of it, but did not use it appropriately, did not choose between what is relevant, or show an under-standing of core/crucial information and peripheral information. Perhaps you treated them as having the same degree of relevance
- Form of presentation problems
- hand-written - was it legible?
- paragraphing? - were the paragraphs too long or too short?
- were the page numbers omitted
- were tables/foot notes used appropriately?
- were the bibliography and references accurate and appropriate?
- were sub-headings etc. if appropriate, well used?
- were the lettering/numbering sequences logical?
- Language related
- spelling - use the 'spell check' on the computer (also for 'typos' that you know you are prone to make)
- articles?
- punctuation! This often causes the greatest difficulty!
- linking phrases?
- prepositions?
- the use of 'must' and 'is' - were the forms too strong in your conclusion?
- tenses - take care with time - especially when you are writing about historical documents which are planning documents for the (then) future and therefore use present and future forms. These may not be appropriate for your purposes now (i.e. historical purposes). (A way to solve this may be to quote relevant parts e.g. Doc. x in 1980, stated: '...').
- Choice of topic
- Clearly, the problems of topic choice, information content, presentation and language are inter-related. However, disentangling the elements in (1.) above is designed to help you focus more clearly on specific areas you can do something practical about.
Problems with your responses to exam questions may also be linked to some of the points mentioned in (a), (b), (c) or (e) above.
- All students, whether native speakers or not can make errors in the language categories above. The object is to reduce these to a minimum (no one writes perfect English). It should also be noted that errors of language are only highlighted when presentation is poor. Improving presentation causes a knock-on effect and improve language. Conversely, improving language errors is difficult without improving presentation and may not make a lot of difference (spelling errors are an exception here).
The use of tables, charts, diagrams in essays can often (a) clarify your objectives for the reader and (b) avoid confusion and possible presentation/language inadequacies.
- Check list
- Make sure you know what your grade means.
- Read the tutor's comments carefully.
- Note 'mistakes in information' (above) and check facts.
- Whether the tutor formally mentions your presentation or not, look at it and see whether there are improvements you could have made:
- is there room for tutor comments - margins, spacing
- do you have more than 2.5 paragraphs to a page average - then check each has only one main topic. Do you have more than 5 on average - check your links are adequate.
- If you are still genuinely puzzled about a low grade, consult your tutor. Make notes about what he/she says.
- Study an example of a good piece of work - either ask your tutor or a fellow student whose work was given a good grade. Use the check list to help you see what they were given credit for. This will give you an idea of expectations.
- If you had genuine, personal reasons which prevented you from doing a good piece of work, tell your tutor. This will not change your grade, but your tutor may be able to help and advise you. [If you have problems in future, tell your tutor about them before hand-in dates, as far in advance as possible]
- When you've done all this, forget about the last piece of work, concentrate on the next and what you have learned from your mistakes. Try to do better next time.