Developing Criteria & Standards and Learning Guides

1. DevelopingCriteria & Standardsand Learning Guides UWS School of Law Retreat @ Manly 20-21 July 2009

2. Goals By the end of tomorrow you will have • Reviewed your understanding of criteria and standards • Begun or continued to work on developing, and hopefully finalised, criteria and standards for your unit assessment tasks • Familiarised yourself with the aims and content of Learning Guides and begun to develop your unit Learning Guide

3. Why are we here? • UWS Assessment Policy - Criteria and Standards-Based Assessment • Mac Collings

4. In the deep end

5. Marking letters of advice Read: • Learning outcomes & instructions to students • Problem • Marking guide • Mark the letters using marking guide

6. What did you learn about criteria & standards?

7. What more do you need to know?

8. How to write criteria & standards • Dr Graham Hendry, UWS Teaching Development Unit

9. Writing Criteria & Standards: DIY

10. DIY: You will need • Unit learning outcomes • Assessment task description • A sense of what you want students to do in the assessment task (criteria) • An idea of what poor, acceptable and good work is (standards) You may find useful • Examples of C&S developed for similar tasks • DIY guide to writing C&S • Examples of past student work for this task, especially good examples

11. What have you learned so far?

12. What are the issues & challenges?

13. Continuing to DIY

14. Review • Graham Hendry

15. Review of criteria and standards 1. What is the most important understanding you will take away from today?

16. Review of criteria and standards 2. What is the ‘muddiest’ issue you still need to clarify?

17. Learning Guides

18. Learning Guides: UWS Policy • Unit Outline and Learning Guides Policy • Mac Collings

19. What are Learning Guides? What do they look like? • Paul Parker, UWS Student Learning Unit

20. ‘’But it’s not really user friendly’Student perceptions of criteria & standards and exemplars Learning guides should include: • 29(d) Annotated models of student essays or reports, or marking guides, to clarify expectations about what is required for assessment activities

21. What helped students learn?

22. What guided students most?

23. FY understanding of being a law student

24. The exemplars • Examples • illustrated language & structure of task • made expectations concrete • generated self confidence students were being successful • Marking exercise was rated most useful for • understanding how to complete the task • assisting to distinguish poor and good quality • especially helpful for first years who ‘don’t really have that much of a concept.’

25. Marking sheet / guide • Least helpful for knowing how to do the task • ‘But it’s not really user friendly’ • ‘congested’ • expectations were clear, but abstract • Reassured students were fairly mark (‘were for teachers’) • But ticked sheets were helpful as feedback for next time

26. How will you clarify expectations about what is required for assessment activities?

27. DIY Learning Guides You will need to include: • Unit information • Assessment information • Assessment instructions • Criteria & standards • Rationale for class learning activities • Exemplars or marking guides • Learning resource information • Reading resources • Literacy resources • Citation conventions

28. Should we include anything else?

29. Review

30. Review • What is the most important understanding you will take away from today?

31. What is the ‘muddiest’ issue you / we still need to clarify?