Rubrics are often used as tools for criteria-based assessments. Although students indicate that they appreciate comments given as feedback which make reference to the rubric and provided in addition to it, there is little information on how this type of feedback actually differs from in-text comments with respect to focus, level, and function of…

This study aims to describe components and levels of upper secondary social science students' reasoning about social problems. We consulted conceptualizations of social scientific reasoning in sociology textbooks and social science education literature, analyzed student papers, and conducted focus groups with social science teachers and teacher…

In this conceptual paper, borne from the experiences of two academic literacy lecturers at the NWU, we ask, regarding elements of assessment, how we can sensibly adapt an intervention-style writing course in a post-COVID higher education context. We propose a course correction model, applicable to academic literacy writing courses, to address the…

In this study, we sought to understand assessment-related attitudes and authentic experiences of evaluation anxiety with a sample of first-year university students. We focused on identifying: (a) why students had reported high levels of anxiety on a recent, grade-bearing assessment, and (b) how their attitudes toward assessment type and weighting…

The feedback received by students on assessment tasks is a major source of their dissatisfaction with feedback generally, explaining why models of assessment continue to evolve to prioritise provision of useful feedback. Boud's notion of sustainable assessment is an example. We argue for conceptualising the sustainability of assessment practices…

Writing in a foreign language is a particularly difficult skill to develop, especially when young learners are concerned because they are parallelly learning to write in their L1 and do not have strong oral foundations in their L2. The issue becomes even more complex when the ways to assess young learners' writing are considered, given that…

The patchwork text is an assessment method whereby students produce and share short pieces of writing over the course of a module that are subsequently integrated in a final summative piece. This paper reports on the experience of using this method of assessment in a criminal justice module. The objective behind introducing this form of assessment…

This paper is focused on an innovation which involved students being assessed on short written responses to an issue to be addressed in the following classroom session. The innovation was evaluated through a student survey, individual and focus-group interviews with participants, and the analysis of a critical friend. Positive findings included…

This article considers the influence that assessment exerts on poetry education. By means of research conducted in a post-16 educational context in Malta, it shows that teachers' and students' practices in the poetry lesson are determined by the kind of examinations that candidates sit for. When the mode of assessment is constituted solely by the…

Student authentication and authorship checking systems are intended to help teachers address cheating and plagiarism. This study set out to investigate higher education teachers' perceptions of the prevalence and types of cheating in their courses with a focus on the possible changes that might come about as a result of an increased use of…

In recent years, plagiarism has been on the increase across the Western world. This article identifies Internet access as a contributory cause of this trend and addresses the implications of readily available Internet sources for the teaching and assessment of writing in schools. The basis for the article is a previous study showing a wide…

This paper adds to the nascent literature on teaching research methods and what students learn from courses and assessment. Postgraduate students are often confronted with large amounts of reading, and the content of material can be intimidating. Convincing them also to engage critically with readings is even more difficult. We report on a…

Most studies into lecturers' written feedback focus on the types of feedback found to be effective when students have the opportunity to act on that feedback, revise their written assignment and improve the mark they receive. But often students do not have this opportunity. Typically, they receive a mark and feedback on an assignment that they…

This paper reports the design of learning-oriented formative assessments in an EFL writing course that involved learners in regularly responding to teacher feedback. Following major assessment and feedback frameworks developed recently, these formative assessments were explicated in three aspects: the scheduling of learning and assessment…

This study compares the impact of "open" and "anonymous" peer feedback as an adjunct to teacher-mediated feedback in a digital online environment utilising data gathered on an academic writing course at a Turkish university. Students were divided into two groups with similar writing proficiencies. Students peer reviewed papers…