Surpassing, not passing

‘P’s get degrees.’ It’s catchy, it rhymes and in the midst of assessment madness, it’s a mantra that can provide some much needed reassurance. But is this the slogan we want encapsulating our future? Even if passes – or ‘P’s’ – get students through, is passing your course enough to guarantee a successful life post-university?

The ‘P’s get degrees’ mentality invokes a world where passing and failing are separated by a thin line of desperate all-nighters. Battling to earn credits or high distinctions can feel like a waste of time during the stressful exam period when setting your sights on P’s will ensure you progress through your course.

Engaging with feedback from tutors and lecturers could be the key to short-circuiting the nerve-racking pass-fail trap.  

Andy Leigh and Simon Housego. Photogrpaher: Hannah Jenkins.

“Making feedback effective is a real challenge,” says Senior Lecturer for the Institute of Interactive Media and Learning Simon Housego.

“The classic cycle for an assessment activity is: the student submits work, the tutor or marker grades it and provides some feedback to the student. End of story.

“But if you think about feedback, it’s useless unless it’s applied. The whole point of feedback is to provide guidance to improve performance. So unless you have another chance to perform, how will the feedback stick?” 

The busy nature of assignment periods often means there’s limited time for students to implement feedback – assuming they’ve understood it in the first place.

First-year law student Cardi Steanes says she sometimes receives feedback on her assignments just a day or two before the next one is due, undermining her ability to improve the particular skills and knowledge being addressed.

“If you’ve done everything completely wrong or not understood the requirements of the first assignment, it’s hard to improve for the second one,” she says. “Timing is the number one issue.”

Photographer: Shane Lo

Housego says, “There’s plenty of evidence students don’t really understand the feedback. So the question is: how do we get students to engage with the feedback more actively?

“One way is to sell them on the idea that if you engage with feedback you’ll get a better grade.”

Under this assessment model, students spend one or two hours early in semester using SPARK^PLUS– award-winning self and peer assessment software developed at UTS – to do a benchmarking exercise, reviewing examples of previous student work. Later in semester, they complete their assessment task and spend a few minutes self-assessing their assignment before submitting it for marking.

This benchmarking helps students understand the assessment criteria and develop the ability to judge the quality of their own work.

After the teacher has graded the assignment and given feedback, students have the opportunity to redo the assessment based on the feedback they’ve received, and accompany the work with a half-page reflection. This generally results in an increased mark.

“How many marks? This will vary from subject to subject, but 10 to 15 per cent on the specific assessment task is common,” says Housego.

In 2013 Senior Lecturer in the School of the Environment Andy Leigh ran a trial in the first year subject Biocomplexity to evaluate in detail how students’ work improved after resubmission. She found the quality of their reports improved significantly in every criteria.

Leigh says, “This was particularly true with the more elusive criteria, such as scientific enquiry – which students typically struggle with.

“In addition, students’ marks improved irrespective of their original mark. ‘Pass’ students were just as likely to improve – sometimes by a whole grade – as ‘distinction’ students.”

Housego explains this assessment model is effective because it helps students make sense of feedback and gives them an incentive to engage with it.

“Hundreds of students in this subject did this, even though all the steps are voluntary. And the pay off is, at the end you’re likely to get a much better mark.”

Photographer: Anna Zhu

If you’re looking for additional feedback on your academic work, UTS also offers free extra-curricular support through U:PASS (Peer Assisted Study Sessions) and the HELPS (Higher Education Language and Presentation Support) service.  

HELPS offers workshops, online resources, group sessions and individual consultations for assignments and referencing, presentations and speaking skills, and reading and study skills.

U:PASS runs small group sessions led by experienced students who facilitate problem-solving conversations between students enrolled in historically challenging subjects.

“It’s designed to get students talking to each other, helping each other and supporting each other in a way that’s not possible in other learning contexts,” says Manager of U:PASS Georgina Barratt-See.

Steanes made use of U:PASS for some of her foundation classes and recommends it to students who need some extra guidance. “I decided to go because I was struggling to understand what was happening in my crim law class, and needed all the help I could get!

“Our U:PASS group touched on every topic we did in class – it was basically a way to clarify what we’d been taught.”

Effective feedback is a two-way street, and UTS provides students with the chance to critique their learning experiences each semester through the Student Feedback Survey (SFS). SFS feedback is passed on to tutors and lecturers, highlighting opportunities for them to improve their subjects.

Second-year Interior and Spatial Design student Christine Lee finds the SFS process constructive.

“It’s an opportunity for us to anonymously give feedback on the course and tutors,” she says. “We had a tutor last year and a lot of us didn't really agree with the way they organised things. The SFS gave us the chance to let them know our concerns, and I've actually noticed improvements.”

Lecturer in Media Studies Belinda Middleweek says receiving criticism can be confronting at first, but overall the SFS is “cause for reflection”.

“As teachers, we do try to find ways of combating or addressing the challenges students have faced.”

Barratt-See emphasises the range of advantages students gain from actively engaging in the process.

“You can often learn more from the feedback – particularly when it's from both your peers and academic staff – than you learn doing the actual assignment! Not only that, but it prepares you for the workplace where giving and receiving feedback is a regular occurrence,” she says.

"UTS has so many useful ways for students to get feedback – we'd really encourage them to make the most of those opportunities.”