A paper from the 2013 STEM Annual Conference.
A quantitative review of marks achieved by students in two assignments on a distance learning module indicated that students were not acting on the feedback they received from the first assignment. Student assignments were marked by one of five tutors; the average mark in each tutor group varied by over 15% whilst the standard deviation within groups varied from 3.1 to 17.6 this indicted that tutors were marking across different grade ranges. The introduction of rubrics both raised the marks students achieved in their second assignment and improved marker reliability reducing inter-group variability to less than 10% and increasing the average standard deviation within groups to 17.7. Feedback from students indicated that they found the rubrics very helpful in clarifying performance and promoting self-assessment whilst the tutors felt that it was a time efficient and informative method of providing feedback.
