Today we have a guest post from Simon Lightfoot, Professor of Politics and the Faculty of Social Science’s Pro-Dean for Student Education, University of Leeds. He can be contacted at S [dot] J [dot] Lightfoot [at] leeds [dot] ac [dot] uk.
In recent article I reflected on my use of policy briefs as an assessment task on a final year module Politics of Aid. What surprised me as I was writing the article was how many expected and unexpected challenges arose because of decisions I had made in the design of the module.
I expected there to be some student concern about a relatively novel assessment task introduced in the final year. To counter that I encouraged at first and then made obligatory the submission of a draft. The unexpected challenge was that many students were unsure as to how the deal with drafts. There were always calls for more generic advice despite the fact that each student was able to get tailored individual feedback on their draft.
I thought that students would welcome individual feedback but overlooked the fact that personalised feedback can be specific and very personal. Just as academics bemoan the infamous reviewer 2 (who turns out to have a twitter feed dedicated to their special brand of reviews), students receive feedback in the same personalised way we do. It became clear that we need to ensure that students know how to use feedback if drafts are to be beneficial, and that students need to understand that revision of one’s writing is a central part of the research process.
The drafting/redrafting issue has grown in significance now that the policy brief is 100% of the module assessment. Though intended to reduce the assessment burden on students, the change just raised the stakes—it became a one strike assessment task, which caused some students to feel more pressured. At 1,500 words, the policy brief is very short compared to many other assessment tasks, yet it must demonstrate a high level of research, synthesis, and structure, which requires time. Convincing students to dedicate enough time to their writing proved to be another challenge. As Chagas-Bastos and Burges (2018) found, ‘it is consequently necessary to continuously emphasize the importance of revising and editing, actively encouraging students to deliberately think in terms of drafts’ if they are to produce good policy briefs.