No abstract

Rust, C, Price, M and O'Donovan, B Improving students' learning by developing their understanding of assessment criteria and processes. Rust, C, Price, M and O'Donovan, B (2003) Improving students' learning by developing their understanding of assessment criteria and processes. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education , 28 (2). pp. 147-164.

Within many higher education systems there is a search for means to increase levels of student satisfaction with assessment feedback. This article suggests that the search is under way in the wrong place by concentrating on feedback as a product rather than looking more widely to feedback as a long-term dialogic process in which all parties are engaged. A three-year study, focusing on engaging students with assessment feedback, is presented and analysed using an analytical model of stages of engagement. The analysis suggests that a more holistic, socially-embedded conceptualisation of feedback and engagement is needed. This conceptualisation is likely to encourage tutors to support students in more productive ways, which enable students to use feedback to develop their learning, rather than respond mechanistically to the tutors' 'instruction'.

No abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis in higher education on the explicit articulation of assessment standards and requirements-whether this emanates from calls for public accountability or based on ideas of good educational practice (Ecclestone, 2001). We argue in this paper that a single-minded focus on explicit articulation, whilst currently the dominant logic of higher education, will inevitably fall short of providing students and staff with meaningful knowledge of standards and criteria. Inherent difficulties in the explicit verbal description of standards and criteria make a compelling argument for the consideration of the role of structured processes that support the effective transfer of both explicit and tacit assessment knowledge. With reference to both empirical evidence and the literature we propose a conceptual framework for the transfer of knowledge of assessment criteria and standards that encompasses a spectrum of tacit and explicit processes, which has proven to be effective in practice in improving student performance.