A+ Assessment Workshop 4
(Version April 2004)
Assessment Plus
ASSESSMENT WORKSHOP 4:
USE OF EVIDENCE AND EVALUATION
Workshops on Understanding
Essay Assessment Criteria
for First-year Students
in the Sciences, Social Sciences,
and Related Disciplines
Assessment Plus (A+) is a two-year consortium project to develop tailored resources for students and staff that focus on core aspects of assessment criteria. The work is taking place at London Metropolitan University, Liverpool Hope University College, and Aston University, radiating out to a number of external partner institutions.
For further details, see the project web site at http://www.assessmentplus.net .
A+ Social Sciences Workshop 4 - Contents
(Version April 2004)
contents
INTRODUCTION
/ 5Overview of the workshop programme / 5
Note to tutors on using the protocols / 6
Support materials / 6
Comments welcome / 6
Attracting students
/ 7WORKSHOP FOUR: USE OF EVIDENCE AND EVALUATION
/ 9Use of evidence
/ 10Activity 15 – Deciding what counts as a good use of evidence / 10
Activity 16 – Detecting citation and referencing errors / 11
Evaluation / 11
Evaluation 1: Evaluating the quality of source material / 12
Activity 17 – Evaluating books as a source of information / 12
Activity 18 – Evaluating journals as a source of information / 13
Activity 19 – Evaluating the Internet as a source of information / 13
Evaluation 2: Assessing value and detecting bias / 14
Activity 20 – Identifying bias in written materials / 15
Activity 21 – Evaluating the evidence: reading paragraphs critically / 16
Resources for workshop four / 17
Sample sentences showing ‘use of evidence’ (for two essay titles) / 19
Paragraph with reference list containing errors / 23
Correct version of paragraph with reference list / 25
Evaluating the quality of books, journals, and materials from the
Internet / 27
Assessing value and detecting bias / 29
Paragraph reading questions / 31
EVALUATION OF THE WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
/ 33Overview of evaluation forms
/ 33Student evaluation form for Workshop 4
/ 35Student evaluation form for the workshop programme
/ 37Staff evaluation form for the workshop programme / 41
REFERENCES
/ 47Assessment Plus: Using assessment criteria to support student learning
HEFCE funded consortium project
46
A+ Social Sciences Workshop 4 - Introduction
(Version April 2004)
Introduction
Overview of the workshop programme
One of the aims of the Assessment Plus (A+) project is to support student learning by highlighting the role of assessment criteria. This project is intended to enhance students’ academic writing skills and improve their essay writing performance. In doing this we hope to address national agendas of widening participation and retention as well as provide practical help to new entrants to Higher Education.
Most students entering Higher Education have only a limited understanding of what is meant by the term ‘assessment criteria’ and do not automatically target their work towards meeting the criteria in a way that is acceptable to the demands of their chosen subject.
It is hoped that the proposed series of workshops will:
· provide students with a clearer understanding of what assessment criteria are and how they are used
· eradicate any misconceptions students have about what is considered appropriate writing in Higher Education
· demystify the essay-writing process
· improve students’ academic writing.
All of the material in this document is freely available for colleagues to use or adapt, provided acknowledgment is made to Assessment Plus by citing the project web site.
u Note to tutors on using the protocols
The intention of this document is to provide you with some suggestions for workshop activities to help your students write better essays. As such it can be used to deliver the workshop as outlined, either on its own or as part of the series of five workshops, or it can be regarded as a resource from which to pick and choose specific activities for integration into existing tutorials or programmes.
The workshop series
Each workshop follows the standard format of a brief rationale followed by a number of suggested activities. Workshop 1 is a general introduction to assessment criteria and why they are important. Workshops 2, 3 and 4 each cover two assessment criteria, though separate workshops could be dedicated to each of the criteria if preferred. Finally, workshop 5 gets students to put it all together and apply what they have learned to their next essay or to look at a past essay and see how it could be improved.
Support materials
Most of the materials you will need to run the activities in the workshops are provided with these downloadable documents. Following each workshop protocol, there is a resources section containing relevant handouts. Occasionally, you will need to supply some of the materials needed (such as journals and books for students to evaluate in Workshop 4); when this is the case, it is clearly indicated in the protocols.
In addition, you may find that you would like to substitute some of your own materials for the ones provided here. In this case, the protocols and resources can act as a guide or template.
Comments welcome
Part of the process of developing any support for students involves trialling and evaluating, and the Assessment Plus team welcomes informal feedback and comments at any stage. Please contact Katherine Harrington at .
In addition, the project has developed evaluation forms for each workshop and for the series as a whole for both students and staff. Please see the section on Evaluation of the Workshop Programme towards the end of this document for copies of the forms.
Attracting students
Tutors may offer these workshops as optional or compulsory depending on the local context and the perceived necessity for such support. For those who are hoping to encourage students on an optional basis, it is important to avoid any ‘remedial’ overtones. The following workshop titles are suggested as more student-friendly and more attractive than the more soberly phrased titles in this protocol. Of course, deciding which titles to use is a matter for individual tutors who know their own students best and what is most likely to appeal to them.
Protocol titles / Student friendly titlesProgramme Workshops on understanding assessment criteria for 1st year students
/ ‘Writing at university’
Workshop 1 What are assessment criteria? / ‘The key to improving your grades’
Workshop 2 Addressing the question
Structuring the answer / ‘Where to begin…?’
Workshop 3 Demonstrating understanding
Developing argument / ‘How to show you know what you're writing about’
Workshop 4 Use of evidence
Evaluation / ‘Looking for the evidence’
Workshop 5 Applying the criteria to your own work / ‘Becoming more expert in your essay writing’
Assessment Plus: Using assessment criteria to support student learning
HEFCE funded consortium project
46
A+ Social Sciences Workshop 4
(Version April 2004)
Workshop Four: i) Use of evidence
ii) EVALUATION
Purpose and rationale
Sometimes students are unclear about what counts as appropriate evidence in science and social science essays. Those coming from an arts or humanities background may not realize, or may be confused about the fact, that quotations are not as appropriate in their new subject. This workshop should clarify this issue and re-emphasize the importance of correct referencing and citing of sources.
The workshop will also show students the steps they need to take when they evaluate a topic. It will highlight that evaluation is perhaps the toughest criterion and it is not expected that this is something they will get right the first time. It should also be pointed out that students’ evaluative skills are expected to improve as they progress through their degree course.
Structure
The workshop begins with some tutor input on striking a balance between independent thinking and following conventions on the use of evidence in essays. This is followed by two brief exercises giving students practice in detecting appropriate uses of evidence and correctly citing it.
The second part of the workshop is concerned with evaluation.
USE OF EVIDENCE
u Tutor input
The assessment criterion of using evidence in essays can be potentially very confusing for students when they enter Higher Education. They are told that they need to think and reason for themselves, but their essays sometimes come back with comments like ‘I’m not interested in your opinion’ or ‘Where’s the evidence for this?’ (Mazuro and Hopkins, 2002).
Students need to be told about trying to achieve a balance here, where we want them to think for themselves about an essay topic, but the demands of writing an academic essay mean they have to follow the convention of backing up any assertions they make with appropriate evidence.
What counts as appropriate evidence varies to some degree between subjects, but generally students writing essays in subjects with a tradition of empirical research should concentrate on empirical research findings reported in journals and on conceptual and theoretical books and papers. As mentioned in workshop three, quotations should be used very selectively, if at all. It is often better to paraphrase quotations in your own words; only when it is important to draw attention to the specific words used by someone else (e.g., when referring to terms and definitions used by a theorist or researcher), should direct quotations be used. In common with most subjects in higher education, statements of personal opinion and anecdotal material should be avoided.
.Activity 15 – Deciding what counts as a good use of evidence
1 Handout
Provide students with examples of essay sentences that show a variety of strengths and weaknesses in their use of evidence. (Sample sentences from essays in the area psychology are provided with this document; however, tutors may prefer to provide their own sentences which refer to other subjects or to more general topics. Suggestions of sample sentences to include in future versions of the protocols would be gratefully received by the A+ team.). To make this exercise more fun, groups could draw sentences out of a hat to work on.
Remind students that evidence is something that is used to support a point; it is not simply a reference to the findings of empirical research (it may be helpful here to refer back to the ‘paragraph questions’ introduced in the last workshop). Ask them to look at their sentences and decide what is strong and/or weak about how evidence is used and why they think this. How could each use of evidence be improved? After ten minutes, ask each group to share with the class how they have improved the weaknesses of each use of evidence.
u Tutor input
Lead students in a general discussion about potential sources of evidence for their essays and about the importance of correct referencing and citation of these sources. Tell students that they should refer to their course handbooks or to journals in their subject area to establish the correct citation and referencing format required of them.
.Activity 16 – Detecting citation and referencing errors
1 Handout
This activity gives students practice in following the conventions of the Harvard system.
Provide students with the paragraph and brief reference list that contain citation and referencing errors which is included in the resources section. Ask them to work in small groups to correct the paragraph. Once they have finished, provide them with the corrected paragraph and reference list and talk them through the corrections they did and did not identify.
EVALUATION
u Tutor input
Students can be told that it is not assumed they will be fully able to critically evaluate from the first piece of work in the first year; rather, it is hoped that their ability to do this will develop over the course of their degree. Tutors generally are appreciative of attempts to evaluate, and many regard thoughtful critical evaluation as a hallmark of the best essays, so it is important to work on developing this aspect of essay writing.
As a basic rule of thumb, there are two levels of evaluation:
i) evaluating the quality of the information in a book, article or material from the Internet,
ii) assessing the value of the information and detecting bias in a book, article or material from the Internet.
i) Evaluating the quality of source material
The ideas in this section are taken from the work of Angela Duckworth and Ruth Keane (both librarians at Liverpool Hope) in Academic Writing and Information Retrieval for the Sciences and Social Sciences.
1 Handout
The Resources section includes a two-page handout with much of the following information, which could be provided to accompany the activities below.
.Activity 17 – Evaluating books as a source of information
Students can be asked how they could evaluate the quality of the information within a book. Can they assume that because a book is published, it is of a high quality or the information is accurate? They also need to consider the purpose of evaluation. It is not just a way to judge the individual merits of one book, but is more a tool to assist them in selecting the ‘best’ information for their essay from the vast wealth of information available.
Ways to get started evaluating books
v Resources required – provided by tutor
Provide students with a variety of books. Ask them to get into pairs, choose a book, and answer the following questions.
(a) Is the book up to date?
(b) Has the book been written by a well-known and respected author?
(c) Does it use mainly primary (original) sources or secondary sources (original work cited by someone else)?
(d) Is the book scholarly rather than popular?
(e) Is the bibliography substantial?
Each pair should have a chance to consider at least two different books. They should then share their answers with the whole group.
.Activity 18 – Evaluating journals as a source of information
In the sciences and social sciences, one of the most valuable sources of information is found in journals. This is because printed materials are often out of date by the time they are published, something particularly true of books as they take a long time to write and get published. For journal articles the process is swifter, although even here it may take eighteen months or more from the time the author submitted her/his first manuscript to the eventual acceptance and publication of the final version. Information in journal form is, therefore, likely to be much more up-to-date than information in books, and using current information is very important in both the sciences and the social sciences. Nevertheless, journals still need to be evaluated in the same way as books.