Study Success at Sussex (S3)
Written feedback
Perhaps the most obvious type of feedback you will receive will be the marks and comments which your tutors will give for your submitted work. You may get this feedback online, via Sussex Direct, or as comments written on your work. To really benefit from your feedback you should:
- Make sure you collect or find your marked work. Sounds obvious - but it's easy to just get on with the next thing, and miss out.
- Make sure you know what your mark means. For more information visit Assessments and grades at university.
- Read the comments carefully (don't just look at the mark!) Note what you did well and most importantly where you can improve.
- If after reading the comments you are still not clear how you could improve your work, make an appointment to speak to the tutor for the module or your Academic Advisor.
- Re-read the comments before you start your next piece of written work.
Try not to be disheartened if a mark is lower than you had hoped for. Remember to take a balanced view: think about what went well as well as the areas you need to work on.
Jess Higgins
Third year Chemistry
View Jess's student perspective
Transcript
When you hand in a piece of work you hand it in with a cover sheet on the front and usually your lecturer will have written comments directly on your work or on your coversheet. So if you've got a question wrong you won't just have a cross you'll have you know a couple of notes explaining why. And the useful thing with most of our courses is that we have workshops as well so if you've got your work back and you've got a question wrong that's an ideal time to say to your lecturer "why did I get this wrong? or actually what's the right answer? - I don't understand." So you have the opportunity to get the feedback and go and help yourself by finding out the proper answers and finding out more about the subject.
Caterina Manzi
First year Politics
View Caterina's student perspective
Transcript
The marking system was another weird thing I had to learn coming here to Sussex because here you have percentages. In Italy you have percentages as well but 60% is the minimum, so if you are good, if you are studying hard, you would expect something about 80%-90%, whereas here it seems impossible, at least in the first year, they told me to expect something between 50% and 70%. Luckily they told me before because when I got my first marks, and all my first marks were around 60%, I was a bit disappointed. Even knowing that, it was a bit disappointing because I had studied hard; obviously I know they are good marks but it’s a bit weird.
Veronika Eder
Second year Psychology
View Veronika's student perspective
Transcript
With feedback on essays you'll get it back and then on the cover sheet there'll be a general comment and it's quite varied but the marker will have specific sections, for example, the style or originality. The different sections that they'll mark you on will make up your overall mark. They also comment on your writing throughout the text, not just on the coversheet. In some schools the feedback is now all meant to go online so that you can follow your feedback throughout your course and see if there is one mistake that you keep making and change that. So I think that is quite useful.
Use general feedback. Tutors may give advice on common errors made in students' work in lectures or other sessions. Listen out for this, and think about how it may apply to you. For some modules your tutors will provide model answers after you have completed an assignment . It is helpful to work through these examples to see where you went wrong or what you might have done differently.