How good are students at estimating their marks?

1. How good are students at estimating their marks? Steve Jewell s.jewell@coventry.ac.uk Coventry Business School BMAF Annual Conference 2010

2. Why do it? Students are international postgraduate business students writing a research proposal for their dissertation • Improve the quality of research proposals • Developing critical thinking

5. The use of a grade form

6. Approaches to social constructivism • Gradual “induction” to the marking process • Jointly marking a research proposal in class • Remarking the “improved” research proposal in class • Students’ amendments to the assessment criteria • Formative assessment • Self and buddy assessment • Bonus marks if their estimations close to mine Have students improved at self assessment?

9. Students never cease to amaze me( or perhaps I am a poor teacher) For last year’s students, of the students that estimated their marks and failed ONLY 22% USED THE GRADE FORM When the other 78% were asked on what basis they assessed themselves they said: • gut feeling • amount of effort I put in • I am used to getting high marks

10. What does the literature say? • Students have a preference for a criterion based assessment process (Andrade and Du 2007; O’Donovan et al 2001 and 2008) • Other studies have shown that weak performers overestimate their performance and strong performers are modest (Nasser and Fresco 2006; Cassidy 2007) • A recent study with first year students showed weak to moderate accuracy of student self-assessment ability. Students judged as more academically competent were able to self-assess with higher accuracy than their less competent peers (Lew et al 2010). • An additional study showed there were those who either believed in the usefulness of self-assessment or did not. Surprisingly results suggested that there is no significant association between student beliefs about the utility of self-assessment and the accuracy of their self-assessments (Lew et al 2010).

11. Where next? Your ideas…….. What are the reasons for the “overconfidence” of the less able students? What could be done to address this?

12. References • Andrade, H. and Du, Y. (2007) 'Student Responses to Criteria-Referenced Self-Assessment.' Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 32, (2) 159-181 • Cassidy, S. (2007) 'Assessing 'inexperienced' students' ability to self-assess: exploring links with learning style and academic personal control.' Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 32, (3) 313-330 • Lew, M.D,N., Alwis, W.A.M. and Schmidt H.G. (2010) ‘Accuracy of students' self-assessment and their beliefs about its utility ‘Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 35 (2) 135 • Nasser, F. and Fresco, B. (2006) ‘Predicting student ratings: the relationship between actual student ratings and instructors’ predictions.’ Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 31, (1) 1-18 • O'Donovan, B., Price, M. and Rust C. (2001) 'The Student Experience of Criterion-Referenced Assessment‘. Innovations in education and training international 38, 74-85 • O'Donovan, B., Price, M. and Rust, C. (2008) 'Developing Student Understanding of Assessment Standards: A Nested Hierarchy of Approaches.' Teaching in Higher Education 13, (2) 205-217