Case Study: Essays
Jenny Hammond, Education
Three options for Assignment one come out of issues that are covered in the first couple of units that students receive.
"It's up to the students to choose what they want to do."
Clear Guidelines
"The subject notes explain what issues are relevant to each of the options, and how they should go about addressing particular assignments, what the lecturer will be looking for."
Explaining the criteria Face-to-Face
"When teaching face-to-face we do a lot of negotiation around the assignments, I'm very clear about what I'm looking for, why I'm looking for it and why I've set each of the assignments."
Distance Mode
"Students receive the material but it doesn't get drummed in quite as much as it does in the face-to-face mode. I tend to do that when I have contact with students, either by e-mail or telephone."
Relating theory to practice.
"They actually have to take on board the kind of issues that they've dealt with in Assignment 1, and they are looking at the implications of that, so I get them to recapitulate a bit on the first assignment in the second one."
Feedback - no standard feedback sheets - mainly written comments or points.
"We grade pass or fail, I try to provide detailed feedback, so I write up about a page of comments. I try to let them know what they have done well and where they could have improved. - not satisfactory work can be resubmitted or part of the work re-done."
Opportunity for resubmission
"Unsatisfactory work can be resubmitted or part of the work can be re-done."
Examples of effective writing
"I have on occasions given them examples of how to write effectively."
Exemplars from previous years.
"I haven't used any, but I think it's really a good idea to do so. I haven't, only because I haven't got a systematic collection of assignments. I don't want to give them exactly what they're doing, but I do want to give them examples of the kind of thing that I think is good quality."