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The careful work of designing learning outcomes, assessment tasks and marking schemes comes to fruition during the marking and grading process. There are five important tasks in this phase:

Assessment tasks can range from multiple-choice to extended written tasks. Although each has its own marking logic, all must be judged consistently and accurately. Consider some of the following strategies:

Before commencing, revisit the marking criteria and standards and ensure all markers within the team share a common understanding of expectations and standards.

For assessments that involve a single task, such as an essay, scan student scripts and get a sense of the overall quality. Loosely order the scripts to represent a 'first cut' on standards. Revise as necessary during the marking process.

For assessments involving multiple tasks, including examinations, mark each task for all students first, then return to mark the next task.

Be strategic with your time. Don't try to correct everything, focus on several key things that are optimally useful at that time for the student. In written tasks, resist the temptation to edit the work. If grammar or language is a problem, edit a sample paragraph only and refer the student to appropriate sources of support and assistance.

Remember that all marks are always subject to moderation.

Use a well-constructed rubric.

The aim of feedback is to help students improve the quality of their work, so feedback is most usefully focused around three areas:

1. the overall goals of the assignment

2. how successfully they have been achieved in this assignment

3. what can be done to improve.

When providing feedback, consider the following strategies:

Organise your feedback around three central points. One point may be acknowledging what has been done well. The remaining two points could focus on practical things they could do to improve their current grade.

Ensure the feedback is pitched to the right level. Remember, feedback is teaching. Ask yourself what is optimal for this student to hear at this point in their development (e.g. first year). Don't overload your feedback with issues beyond their grasp. Use the marking rubric to guide the feedback necessary for each criterion.

Provide group feedback. This sheet might reiterate the goals of the assignment, noting areas that were handled well by most students, common misunderstandings, and how they could be improved. It may also include discussion about the next assessment task. Group feedback sheets consolidate the individual feedback provided, and may also save individual marking time.

While some tasks have clear answers, more commonly we are required to make judgements. In these instances, we are required to interpret, using our professional expertise, how successfully each criterion has been met and apply marks or an overall grade to the work. We aim to do this with accuracy, consistency and transparency. However, human error may occur when there is:

a lack of shared understanding about criteria and standards among the marking team

student work that is performing well against some criteria, but very poorly against others

personal stylistic preferences or dislikes of individual markers not shared by the team

unconscious bias about particular students and their abilities

grade variance or slippage during long marking sessions, often resulting from fatigue.

We need to be on our guard about all possibilities of human error, and be able to explain and account for our grading judgements. If we are uncertain, it is important to gain a second opinion through moderation.

It is the unit assessor's responsibility to derive a final grade from students' accumulated assessment results over a session and report all grades, via e-Academic, to the school Board of Assessors at the end of each teaching session. Aspects of this final step in the assessment process include:

deriving a final raw mark for each student and converting this to a band of achievement (e.g. HD, D )

making discretionary judgements about students whose raw marks are on the margins of grades

finalising and reporting grades, and monitoring students who are incomplete

acting upon student queries or appeals about grading decisions

reflecting, in the light of experience and student feedback, on how the assessment may be improved for the next iteration.

There are various supports for markers, including the unit assessor or teaching team, the relevant course coordinator, the Centre for Teaching and Learning, as well as the guidance offered by the University's assessment policy.

It is important that all students have a clear understanding of how they will be assessed when studying units at SCU. If assessment details are sufficient, easily accessible, and accurate, then student complaints regarding assessment are minimised and more readily resolved. For this reason, assessment information provided to students must be consistent and align with the assessment details provided by the unit assessor to the University's Unit and Course Management System (UCMS) prior to a unit's learning site becoming available at the start of each teaching session. These assessment details are incorporated into the Unit information guide (UIG) for the unit by the UCMS. The UIG must be accessible to students accessing the learning site via the Unit Overview link on the site menu.

Changes to the assessment strategy to take advantage of the assessment options provided by MySCU must be carefully planned and implemented according to SCU policy and procedures.

The SCU unit template provides for a common learning site content area called Assessment Details where assessment tools and any other assessment-related information are stored. In the interests of ease of access and consistency for students, it is strongly recommended that all assessment tasks be available in this area. If your assessment tools are spread across different content areas they may be difficult for the student to find, potentially leading to confusion and a less than optimal student experience.
SCU information about grades
Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research (77)1, 81-112.

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The careful work of designing learning outcomes, assessment tasks and marking schemes comes to fruition during the marking and grading process. There are five important tasks in this phase: Assessment tasks can range from multiple-choice to extended written tasks. Although each has its own marking logic, all must be judged consistently and accurately.

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Perhaps a marking turnaround of 10 days, at least for large units with large marking teams to coordinate.

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Perhaps a marking turnaround of 10 days, at least for large units with large marking teams to coordinate.

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Could changing the assessment type to a more streamlined assessment task, perhaps be a consideration?

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More markers:

with strong expertise in the area of marking,

that know how to mark, and do not need to be trained and

that are committed to working at SCU.

Currently our markers are freshly recruited, and need training. There needs to be training for them and they are ready to go.

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Marker reliability is important. So maybe outsourcing markers or capping how many students a marker can take on to mark.

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We need assessments that are easy to mark yet support student learning and they are enjoyable and motivating.

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We need assessments that are easy to mark yet support student learning and they are enjoyable and motivating.

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Resubmission of fails policy needs consistency and clarity to ensure fairness and equity.

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Resubmission of fails policy needs consistency and clarity to ensure fairness and equity.

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If we extend the 7 days then the second assessment would need to be submitted by the Friday of Week 6. This is necessary to meet the publication of grades at the end of term

# data[].attributes.subject
If we extend the 7 days then the second assessment would need to be submitted by the Friday of Week 6. This is necessary to meet the publication of grades at the end of term

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Securing marking staff early and engaging retired school teachers has made the marking teams I am working with inherited from previous UA flush covering small amounts of marking each and means I don’t work weekends. Works really well. Marking packages of comment banks quick marks seem to work well with keeping markers coming back

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The marking time needs to be extended.
The upload of final grade should be pushed back until marking is (almost) complete. It is difficult to focus on Term 2 teaching with a backlog of Term 1 marking data to clean

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Make the processes for UAs for resubmissions absolutely clear - currently UAs put in place the policy, and then are over ridden when the students complains "up the chain" basically making it so that anyone who knows to keep complaining is getting a resubmission despite the policy in place

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Casual UAs need pay for planning O week and week 7 to cover the marking submission and special consideration coming on, esp for larger units.

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Large units should be split into 2 units so that maximum number of students in 1 unit never exceeds 300 per unit/per UA

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Large units should be split into 2 units so that maximum number of students in 1 unit never exceeds 300 per unit/per UA

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No marking on weekends or public holidays

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At a minimum 7 business days (this at least somewhat considers the wellbeing and markers and UAs and the need for them to have family time as well)

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Unit markers recruited way ahead of time instead of last minute when numbers suddenly increase

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More days for marking and for finalising marking for UAs.

More training/resources for new UAs on navigating systems/tech issues with marking

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Stop allowing special considerations to be taken on top of special considerations on top of special considerations so that we end up marking student papers well into the following term

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Better orientation process for markers

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technology actually working for markers and UAs

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No extensions allowed to be applied for after the due date has passed. No extensions on top of extensions. A set length of extension time made clear. e.g, 5 days max.

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No extensions allowed to be applied for after the due date has passed. No extensions on top of extensions. A set length of extension time made clear. e.g, 5 days max.

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NO RESUBMISSIONS

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All UAs using the same processes within their "teams" so that markers know expectation of the team rather than the expectation of one marker, then the next, etc.

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Bringing assessment tasks into conversation with learning, and the lean turn around marking times

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Knowing which units we are teaching and recurring units over year and years makes planning easier and calmer.

Being able to engage and secure markers early calms me too. At least a core team and then adding more if more enrolments.

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A quicker AI reporting process

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Clear training for all markers that ensure they are all on the same page about SCU processes, what is expected of them, etc.

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An extension to the current 7 day turnaround would be highly beneficial to manage workload and pace for markers, particularly as many are working full time as teachers in schools. This would also assist greatly in dealing with late submissions, particularly the short 1-3 day extensions, so everything can be marked and moderated together.

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Acknowledging that the model means more extensions and so the marking timeframes are unreasonable

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Acknowledging that the model means more extensions and so the marking timeframes are unreasonable

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Seperate contracts for moderation and not leaving it all to the UA

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Outsourcing markers.

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A change from the 7 days turn around that includes weekends - it puts too much pressure on markers and UAs and is not functional when all units are now due at the same time in the 6 week model

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More days to mark

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Staggered assessment dates between units to support having markers who can mark more consistently throughout the year.
Tasks that can be automatically assessed such as quizzes during the term so students are getting some mid-term feedback and know how they are progressing but UAs are not required to mark, moderate, teach and UA at the same time.
Manually assessed tasks at the end of Term.
7 working-day or 10 day marking turnaround time.
A university-wide decision about how to approach the penalties around AI if it is not supposed to be used.
Special consideration administration to be administered internally taking load of UAs.

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Self marking tasks in assignments.
Peer marking.
Paced assessment tasks.

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Lead marker?