Assessment
Using Turnitin to help improve students’ writing
“Yes, it helped me to convince myself that it is better to arrange one’s own thoughts rather than copy them and make them seem as your own”
Introduction
On the face of it, ‘assessment’ seems a rather dry subject. Isn’t the important thing a student’s own dialogue with a text or a set of texts? Isn’t the way we ‘test’ or ‘assess’ that dialogue something of a technicality? The problem with this view of assessment is twofold: it downplays the variety of ways (good and bad) in which choice of assessment can affect what students do, and it conceives of assessment as ‘summative’ rather than ‘formative’—as something that happens after a student has worked on a course rather than something that can be used during a course to help shape a student’s intellectual development. Thinking of assessment in this limited way also ignores the fact that it is often only through assessed work (such as, traditionally, the essay) that students can get to grips with a topic.
Because students (naturally enough) adapt their work patterns to fit in with assessment requirements, the lecturer’s choice of assessment method is a crucial means of getting students to ‘engage’ with a topic in the way or ways in which she or he wants. Assessment choice, then, is at the heart of what we as lecturers hope to achieve.
Skilful use of varied forms of assessment can help combat the twin evils of plagiarism and the ‘assessment-driven’ student. The less predictable and conventional a prescribed assignment is, the less vulnerable it is to plagiarism. Designing a course with a sequence of small-scale asssessed tasks which build cumulatively on one another, meanwhile, should help mitigate the problem of the student who simply chooses three topics or texts to ‘do’ at the start of a semester and ignores all other aspects of the course.
Three ways of categorizing assessment are identified in the QAA Code of Practice:
diagnostic assessment provides an indicator of a learner’s aptitude and preparedness for a programme of study and identifies possible learning problems;
formative assessment is designed to provide learners with feedback on progress and inform development, but does not contribute to the overall assessment;
summative assessment provides a measure of achievement or failure made in respect of a learner’s performance in relation to the intended learning outcomes of the programme of study.
These categories are not mutually exclusive.
As the Subject Centre’s Curriculum Surveys (1 and 2) have shown, the standard method of assessment in English courses remains the essay (in coursework, in exams, or as a ‘dissertation’ or ‘thesis’). Like the novel, the essay has had a long history and shows no sign of imminent demise. The ability to write at length about set texts is likely to remain at the centre of English degrees for a long while yet. According to the English Benchmarking Statement, ‘English students should be required to write essays as a fundamental part of their learning experience.’ Essays can, however, very usefully be complemented by a wide range of other forms of assessment, some of which are listed on the Modes of Assessment page and discussed in detail on the website of the HEFCE FDTL (Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning) project, Assessment and the Expanded Text.
Varying assessment helps all students, accommodating, among other things, inevitable variations in student ‘learning styles’ and skills and social and cultural background. It is often suggested that innovative forms of assessment are especially useful as a means of ‘widening participation’ by catering to the needs of students from groups under-represented in HE who may be particularly lacking in confidence about their ability to work in ‘academic’ forms. The shift in English at A-level over past years away from extended writing provides English lecturers with a further (and pressing) motivation to think creatively and experimentally about assessment methods.
- Other Assessment content
- Assessment case studies
- Assessment projects
- Assessment publications
- Assessment video
- Assessment & the Expanded text project: Towards a Productive Assessment Practice – Case Studies
- Awareness into action: linking learning with research in ecolinguistics
- Enhancing interactive learning in the classroom with Turning Point
- From stick to carrot – using Turnitin to help improve students’ writing
- Make Your Own: Editing a Renaissance Play
- Seed guide 3: Best in Show – case studies in higher education English
- Teaching Theory and the use of the Reading Diary
- Testing Language Skills using Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA)
- Text.Play.Space : Creative Online Activities in English Studies
- Theatre Programming as a Problem-Based Assessment for use in Teaching Scottish/Irish Drama
- Using Blogs for Peer Feedback in a Creative Writing Course – An Exploratory Study
- Using Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) as a learning and teaching resource
- Using online learning journals to enhance students’ engagement with literary theory
- Using Screen Capture Software in Student Feedback
- Assessment & the Expanded text project: Current assessment practice 3 – Work based learning, Self and Peer Assessment, Skills-based Assessment
- Assessment & the Expanded Text project: Introduction
- Assessment & the Expanded text project: Towards a Productive Assessment Practice – Case Studies
- Assessment & the Expanded text: Current assessment practice 2 – Portfolios, Project work
- Creating and Assessing Discussion Forums in English Studies
- Creative Assessment in the English Literature degree: Towards Criteria for Assessment
- Learning by Producing Student Journals
- Learning on the Language-Literature Border: Ways of integrating language and literature within final year modules
- Methodology and Criteria for two types of ‘Innovative’ assessment: Discussions and Displays
- New Tools for Creative Interpretation: An Investigative Study using Digital Video and Computer Animation
- Study Logs / Reading Dossiers / Learning journals: their pedagogic benefits and value as a means of assessment in English degrees.
- Supplementary Discourses in Creative Writing Teaching
- Teaching and Assessing Writing Skills
- Teaching metrics using EVS (Electronic Voting System) handsets