For reasons best known to others, it’s the end of our first semester here, so that means coursework grades are going back to students.
I was even more interested than usual in this event this time around because something unusual happened with my class: they came to talk with me about their assessment.
I know that might seem mundane, but despite my best efforts my office hours have often resembled one of the remoter oases in a desert: potentially of use, but rarely visited by anyone.
I’d love to tell you what was different this semester, but I genuinely have no idea: I did the things I usually did, so maybe it was a cohort effect. Or not.
In any case, I reckon I sat down for discussions with most of the students and emailed with several others. In those exchanges we typically covered both generic guidance on what was required and specific discussion on students’ plans.
Of course, the big question is whether that helped the students to do better.
At this point, I’ll note that my class had about 35 students and it’s a one-off event so far, so I’m alive to not over-reading the outcomes. Against that, the marking has been confirmed by the second marker.
That said, the main positive outcome was that the bottom half of the class moved up quite markedly. In previous years, I’ve always had a cluster of students who simply didn’t ‘get’ the assessment – a reflective essay – and thus came out with poor marks. This time, I had only a couple of students in that situation, and they appeared (from my records) to have not attended most of the classes, and hadn’t come to talk.
Put differently, the tail was severely trimmed and the large bulk of students secured a decent grade.
What didn’t appear to happen was an overall shift upwards though: the top end remaining where it had been previously.
Again, I’m not sure why this might be. Without another cohort I’m not even sure if my guidance actually did anything for anything.
Quite aside from the specific instance, it does underline for me how little me know about the ways in which our teaching practice does and doesn’t impact on student learning.
In this case, I don’t really know how one could ethically test the impact of formative feedback and support, given the multiple variables at play. If you have an idea, I’d love to hear it.
Were they all the same year? Wondering if admissions criteria may have changed.
Actually, this time I did have a mixture of my usual final year UGs and a handful of Masters level. However, we have been going through a change in admissions requirements over recent years, so that might well have been a factor too.