Fair assessment

1
Fair assessment

• Jude Carroll
• 7 May 2004
• University of Stirling

2
Good practice underpins fairness

• Integrated course design
• Appropriate tasks that encourage learning
• Transparent task briefs
• Valid assessment criteria
• Reliable decision-making when marking
• Timely feedback that links to the assessment
  criteria

3
First requirement for fairness understanding
the rules

• There are rules they are culture-specific,
  changing, often only tacit and implicit
• Aim for students pain-free learning
• New ways may mean students modifying (or setting
  to one side) previous rules
• Their apprenticeship and your patience but not
  ignoring, implying or hoping

4
Teaching the rules implicit or explicit?

• -Writing ref? 4 times in red ink in the margin
  of student work then giving it a good mark
• -Only marking the first 2000 words if a student
  hands in 3500 when asked for 2000
• -Deducting 5 marks for poor referencing practice
  in a Year 2 essay
• -Deciding 2 students colluded so giving each 30
  marks in work worth 60
• -Telling students at induction You must not
  plagiarise

5

• Suppose students say they understand the
  definition of collusion.
• List the ways they discover answers to questions
  like
• -Who can I ask for help?
• -What kind of help is ok?
• -At what point does help become NOT ok?
• -How much similarity between my work and others
  will be ok? How much similarity is too much?
• -Is it ok to study together? OK to share ideas?
  OK to share writing up?
• -How can I use other students work acceptably?

6
Academic apprenticeship

• Practice, targeted feedback, more practice - yes
• Hoping and using implicit methods no
• How?
• -early diagnostic activities with targeted
  feedback on academic rules
• -peer feedback, perhaps linked to course
  requirements
• -whole group feedback after sampling
• -assessing the students use of feedback in the
  final grade
• Excellent written support and guidance
• Activities that direct students to access written
  guidance

7
Plagiarism cheating or misunderstanding?

• What is it? passing off others work as your
  own, intentionally or unintentionally
• The message Not understanding or not using
  academic conventions correctly is not cheating
  but it is plagiarism and it is not acceptable.

8
Cheating whats going on in the UK?

• Deliberate breaking of regulations for personal,
  unfair benefit e.g.
• -copying texts / designs / structures/
  choreography
• -cut-and-paste from the Web
• -wholesale downloading/buying essays
• -ghost writing
• -using translation programmes
• -re-submitting work
• -mis-shelving books
• -free-loading in assessed group work
• -lying when seeking extensions, extenuating
  circumstances etc
• And?

9
Wake up call needed?

• 1999 (US) 13 unattributed cut-and-paste
• 2003(US) 41 unattributed cut-and-paste
• 2004 (UK) 61 sometimes or at least once
• http//www.coursework.info/
• a collaborative project to preserve intellectual
  and academic information and catalogue it online
  for the benefit of students. With over 63,000
  essays and courseworks and 49,000 registered
  users Coursework.Info offers the largest U.K.
  orientated academic database in the world.

10
New documents added

• Wednesday, April 07 2004 (387)
• Tuesday, April 06 2004 (275)
• Monday, April 05 2004 (409)
• Friday, April 02 2004 (312)
• Wednesday, March 31 2004 (95)

11
Protecting the majority

• Students who dont cheat are angry and
  discouraged if those who do are rewarded.
• Strategies for deterrence need not be onerous or
  overwhelming.
• The good news you can start anywhere.
• The bad news you are unlikely to be effective
  unless you combine several actions and work with
  colleagues.

12
Six things individuals can do

• Design out opportunities, design in checks
  against plagiarism
• Induct students into academic rules and
  conventions
• Teach writing skills and provide safe practice
• Help create a culture where people dont turn a
  blind eye
• Use detection, including electronic detection,
  judiciously
• Participate in consensual attempts at devising
  fair tariffs

13
Detetection strategies

• Health warning detection alone will never
  deter.
• Electronic via Google or Plagiarism Advisory
  Service (iParadigms)
• Collusion detectors (CopyCatch)
• Interviewing about the process
• Viva on content
• Responding to smoking guns eg Typex-ed name
  with biro re-write!
• Most common Eagle eye tactics

14
Detection eagle eye tactics

• Change of language, of level or of discourse
  style
• Smoking guns such as urls left in
• Strange bibliographies, mixed referencing
  systems, dated references only
• Anachronisms
• Individual words outwith student vocabulary
  perfect punctuation
• American spelling
• Out-of-character level of work
• Fully finished work, no evidence of process
• This reads as strangely familiar

15
Unfair punishment some story telling

• Ignoring until the Honours dissertation then
  going for big penalties
• Ignoring in the first year without explicit
  teaching
• Ignoring in some students and not others
• Ignoring in some disciplines and not others
  different rules in different disciplines but not
  explained
• Passing all cases to an overworked Head of
  Department who does nothing for 6 months then
  opts for no action.
• Letting individual academics set tariffs

16
Fair assessment at the level of teachers

• Good assessment practice clear explicit briefs,
  dates etc
• Skills teaching, skills practice and feedback
• Being explicit about academic values, modelling
  them, having high expectations about learning
• Designing out easy cheating Carroll (2002) A
  Handbook for Deterring Plagiarism in Higher
  Education
• Working towards a no-blind-eyes culture
• Lobbying for systems that do not punish for
  detecting plagiarism

17
Fair assessment at programme levels

• Varied, appropriate reliable assessment and not
  too much of it!
• Clear induction into academic values, skills and
  conventions thou shalt before thou shalt
  not. Not muddling induction with teaching
• Modelling and encouraging academic integrity
• Extra support for those who need it. Treating
  everyone the same is not the same as treating
  everyone equally. Support offered in ways that
  dont punish.
• No go soft strategies as a way of seeking an
  easy life

18
Fair assessment at institutional level

• Recent, widely discussed and agreed academic
  conduct regulations appropriate to the real world
  of 2004, not the world of 1985.
• Penalties that are timely, transparent,
  consistent and defensible.
• Using Academic Conduct Specialists
• Implementing tariff-based punishment systems to
  seek consistency.