Monitoring demonstrators to ensure consistency in marking and providing feedback to students

Jason Steggles, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing.

I meet with the demonstrators as a group and provide them with a briefing paper and clear documents with assessment criteria and marking scheme. I go through marking a coursework script with them, discuss any issues involved and explain what is expected of them in terms of feedback. Importantly, I provide them with a list of example comments to use when formulating their feedback which are related to each category in the marking scheme. The demonstrators are then encouraged to create their own comment bank for feedback.

Once demonstrators begin marking they are asked to send a sample of the first 3-4 papers they mark to me. I review the marking and the feedback they have provided, and then discuss any issues that arise with them. The marks and feedback are entered into NESS by the demonstrators which facilitates this process.

It was proving impossible to individually mark the work of over 200 students and provide feedback, and so demonstrators were recruited to assist. There was a lack of consistency between marks and feedback provided by the different demonstrators, causing issues with students and proving very time consuming to resolve.

Yes, since implementing this system, there are dramatically less students who have reported issues with the marking and feedback they received. Although the initial period is time consuming, the whole process saved me time.