Activity 8. Communicating with students
You have received the following email from one of your students.
The unit outline states that the assignment must be submitted electronically via the institution’s Learning Management System.
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Dear Dr Jones I have missed the due date for my assignment because my computer crashed last night. Can I please have an extension? Cheers Judy (Student) |
Based on your institution’s policies and procedures, what is your reply to Judy? Should Judy be given a penalty for this late submission? If you are unsure, ask your Unit Coordinator – because from our experience, something like this is bound to happen over the next few weeks!
Communication with students
The Unit Coordinator is responsible for organising and maintaining communication between the teaching team to address assessment and moderation processes and issues. The teaching team should be involved in the development of assessment and marking criteria (where possible) and the establishment of a consensus for the explanation of and marking of each assessment.
Communicating marking criteria to students
Assessment is associated with a lot of anxiety for students, and this often relates to marking criteria. You can help alleviate that anxiety by providing explicit information and guidance about assessment requirements. This is likely to be most effective if done more than once and in a variety of modes, for example, in the unit outline, in the institution’s Learning Management System, and discussed during teaching time, especially with first-year students.
Examples of assessment strategies include:
- providing information and education on scholarly skills, such as researching information from appropriate sources and academic writing and referencing (academic integrity);
- explaining the meaning of different assessment verbs, e.g. ‘discuss’, ‘critically evaluate’;
- providing clear guidance on the requirements for different assessment types (e.g. essays, lab reports, project proposals, oral presentations) by discussing the requirements and, where possible, showing students exemplars of work; and
- spending time reviewing rubrics or marking guides so that students understand the requirements and how marks will be allocated to their work.
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