Feedback on exams

1. Feedback on exams Vicki Bruce On behalf of School of Psychology

2. Stages 2 and 3 ‘exam feedback’ • For every module, students get ‘how did I do’ distributions where they can see their marks set in context of class distribution • Stage 2 – MCQ and essay marks separately given • Both stages have workshops providing generic feedback and advice on exams.

3. Workshops • Generic descriptions of positive and negative exam answers from module leaders • General advice about how to do well in writing exam answers • But the approach not wholly successful

4. Feedback on our workshops (VT) • If they are given general positive and negative feedback, the students will believe that the positive feedback applies to their exam essays. This is because they thought that they did what the question asked, they wanted to get a good mark and did their best. • If they believe the positive feedback applies to their work but they get a low mark, they think that the feedback is unhelpful and they don’t know how to apply it to improve the next time. • If they can’t identify with the negative feedback about the actual content of their essays then they tend to blame things such as poor handwriting or panicking, things that don’t reflect lack of effort or ability. • Exam feedback will only help students to improve if they get it with their script so that they can see for themselves that the negative feedback applies to them. • Feedback on scripts should be brief and can still be ‘general’ e.g. fails to answer the question, there are errors in the argument, no reading outside of the lecture material, confusing and poorly structured – therefore it won’t be massively time consuming.

5. First year exam feedback • PSY1007 – History of Psychology • The only Stage 1 exam using essay answers • First we have a ‘seen’ practice essay from one that appeared on last year’s paper, written in exam conditions, as a mid-term assignment – 5% module mark • This is annotated and returned to students along with ‘generic’ feedback:

6. Choose two scientists who made important contributions before 1880 to the development of psychology as an independent discipline. Outline the contributions they each made and explain why you have chosen these two people to discuss. Good answers • Made good choices of scientists whose contributions are clearly important • Justified choice of, e.g. philosopher as ‘scientist’ if that seemed to be necessary • Said something about the last part of the question – i.e. justified the choices in terms of their impact on development of the discipline • Were accurate about the dates of key milestones (e.g. the founding of Wundt’s lab) • Said something about what it means to have psychology as an ‘independent discipline’. • Showed some evidence of general reading/research Weaker answers • Chose some number other than two • Chose scientists whose contributions were made later than 1880 • Chose contributions made too early to be seen to have contributed directly to psychology • Were poorly organised • Knew very little about one or both of the chosen two • Did not justify the choices made

7. Exam itself • Essay answers are marked and briefly annotated (e.g. x in margin where something clearly wrong, a tick where a good point is made, a note at end such as ‘did not answer question’) • In class, in semester 1 of Stage 2, in the run up to preparing for their next examinations – all these scripts returned in class alongside generic feedback (see my handout) – so students can see why they got the marks they did • Scripts collected in again after this session

8. Why not do this routinely? • We run scared of students cross-comparing/appealing (but collect in the scripts minimises this) • We think it takes too much time (my session does not) • The more explicit are the marking criteria the less effort needed to prepare for this • I suggest each programme could pick one module per semester to apply exam feedback to.