Marking assignments
Senior Diploma examiner Paula Goddard off ers tips on what to
look for and how to mark Diploma assignments
M
ARK WHAT you see and not what you think you see. Use this as the guiding principle when marking internally set
assignments and the exam board’s moderated marks will match the ones awarded to your students. Because however much you want to award all the eff ort you know, and saw, your students put into their assignments, if there is no evidence, then no marks can be awarded. Marking is about evidence. Bits of paper, plans, photographs, clay models or even videos published on websites. If you are confi dent that the work laid out in front of you is the student’s own work then you can give it a mark. T is all gets a bit tricky when a group task
has been set. Where the Diploma specifi cation allows it, jointly produced work is acceptable, but only when each student’s contribution is clearly identifi ed. When a group has shared the same data, marks can be awarded as long as the joint task has been written up separately and in the student’s own words. But is it the student’s own words? Copying and pasting sections of a website straight into an assignment write-up is not unknown. T e dead giveaway is either a sudden change of font style or complex phrases and sentence structures appearing in the middle of a word- processed document. And should you come across well-focused photographs taken at arty angles then odds-on the image has been lifted straight off the internet. Plagiarism can occur innocently when a student is unaware of the need to acknowledge their sources. So before awarding zero marks for the submission of another’s work, check the student has not referred to a piece of research somewhere in their assignment, however obliquely. T e specifi cation is the key to fi nding out
where the rest of the marks can be awarded as it shows what assessment criteria an assignment task must pass. Each Diploma specifi cation explains how these criteria are shared across the Learning Outcomes for each unit. Where and how the possible marks are distributed is shown in each unit’s Marking Grid. Your job as the assignment marker is to
fi gure out how closely the student’s work matches the assessment descriptors in these Marking Grids. Understanding each exam
32
Assign of the times
board’s verb descriptor defi nitions goes a long way to making this job easier. A student may be asked to “set out the main reasons for” when briefl y explaining an element of a Learning Outcome, and show a “complete set of reasons” for the higher mark band which asks for a thorough explanation. Use your judgement in deciding which
verb descriptor the student’s work most closely matches (the “best fi t approach” in exam board jargon) and you’ll have found the mark to award. And to ensure the exam board understands
your decision, guide their moderator to the mark-generating evidence in the portfolio. Annotate the work with the relevant verb or description – for example “outline” “describe”, “economic benefi ts”. T is will help the moderator understand which part of the Learning Outcome is being considered. Not all Outcomes generate physical evidence. T e design of team-working exercises or practical tasks may meet the Marking Grid descriptors but not actually generate any ‘hold in the hand’ evidence that can be added to a student’s portfolio. When this happens, Witness Statements and Learner Observation Records can be submitted as evidence instead.
Edexcel refers to this as “Grid B” evidence and it is marked separately from “Grid A”, or learner generated evidence. Grid A and Grid B marks are added together to fi nd the total mark for the assignment. T is method of marking is unique to Edexcel but other exam boards allow non-physical evidence to contribute to the total marks. But before awarding top marks for every
Witness Statement submitted, just double- check the wording of your exam board’s Diploma Specifi cation to make sure you know how many marks can be awarded for this type of evidence. As a fi nale, you now get to total the marks
awarded for each Learning Outcome. If the total is greater than the maximum unit marks allowable then either there’s a typing error in the Diploma specifi cation or you’ve awarded too many marks for one, or more, Learning Outcomes. Never assume the marks available across all Diploma units across all levels are the same. Total unit marks of 45, 48, 60, 75 and 125 are common across units on diff erent Diplomas. Finally, do not be afraid of awarding top
marks if you think the student deserves it. But never just think it; make sure you can see the evidence too.
DD Delivering Diplomas • Volume 2 No 2 Autumn 2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36