Does anyone feel feedback for coursework is inadequate?

Do you not get the chance to meet with the tutor after your mark is given to discuss your errors? My written feedback is normally a bit vague (there's only so much you can fit in a small box after all), but we can go and see them in an office hour and they will tell us more.

Reply 2

Urgh don't get me started on this, my university seems to strive to provide the most useless feedback in the world. I got a 2:1 grade on my last essay (we work on the cas scale, not percentages, it's just easier to say 2:1 than explain the whole scale haha) and honestly, I wasn't happy with it at all. The feedback? "Very commendable points, this essay was excellently focussed and all points were relevant and required to give strength to your argument. I would suggest going into more detail next time."
Ah yes, I can get loads more detail into an essay when I'm 12 words under the maximum word count. Cheers for the help.

Or my friend who got a third, "very good essay." Like seriously, are you ****ing joking? You can't give someone a third class mark and not tell them why.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 3

Jam198

OP

7

Original post by Airfairy

Do you not get the chance to meet with the tutor after your mark is given to discuss your errors? My written feedback is normally a bit vague (there's only so much you can fit in a small box after all), but we can go and see them in an office hour and they will tell us more.

yes and No, because it's marked by different tutors. Some of the work is marked by our tutors, some are by people/ other tutors who we don't even interact with. And never followed our development as we went along. So, there's no chance of getting to meet all of them, and some comments are sarcastic, urk.

Reply 4

Jam198

OP

7

Original post by GoingToBurst

Urgh don't get me started on this, my university seems to strive to provide the most useless feedback in the world. I got a 2:1 grade on my last essay (we work on the cas scale, not percentages, it's just easier to say 2:1 than explain the whole scale haha) and honestly, I wasn't happy with it at all. The feedback? "Very commendable points, this essay was excellently focussed and all points were relevant and required to give strength to your argument. I would suggest going into more detail next time."
Ah yes, I can get loads more detail into an essay when I'm 12 words under the maximum word count. Cheers for the help.

Or my friend who got a third, "very good essay." Like seriously, are you fucking joking? You can't give someone a third class mark and not tell them why.

Exactly, that's my experience too. They're so subjective especially when their criticism is tied up with word limitations, they forget the criteria of what they set and what they are marking, loads of room for bias.

Reply 5

polscistudent88

12

Original post by Jam198

yes and No, because it's marked by different tutors. Some of the work is marked by our tutors, some are by people/ other tutors who we don't even interact with. And never followed our development as we went along. So, there's no chance of getting to meet all of them, and some comments are sarcastic, urk.

But you should anyways be informed about the reasons behind your grade. I mean, even if your tutor was not the only one grading your paper, s/he should be able to make sense of others' feedback (in theory at least) and then to explain to you what went wrong...

Reply 6

Original post by Jam198

Exactly, that's my experience too. They're so subjective especially when their criticism is tied up with word limitations, they forget the criteria of what they set and what they are marking, loads of room for bias.

It's so frustrating. They seem to forget that they've set a strict word count and will mark you down for going over it, so when they basically tell you that the only way to improve the essay would be to go over the word count, it kind of sucks hahaha. My boyfriend says that the best thing he learned at uni was to figure out how each person marks and then write to their liking, not how you want to.

Reply 7

Airfairy

Original post by Jam198

yes and No, because it's marked by different tutors. Some of the work is marked by our tutors, some are by people/ other tutors who we don't even interact with. And never followed our development as we went along. So, there's no chance of getting to meet all of them, and some comments are sarcastic, urk.

Oh ok, yeah now you mention it, even though our essays are marked by tutors we can go and see, our exams are marked by randomers in the department and I have no idea how I would see them for extra feedback. I don't have many exams in my degree so it's not bothered me, but it would do if I had any more.

I think a lot of people would agree with you though. If I ever look at the unistats website, the satisfaction of feedback criteria always seems to be the lowest at most unis. Not REALLY low, but low compared to the rest.

Like the above poster I've had really annoying situations where I may get a 2:1 and the comments don't give me anything to work on if I wanted to aim for a first or a higher 2:1. I think tutors just assume if they have given you a 2:1 you don't want to strive for better. I did get 44 once and he gave me loads of crap feedback, but I disagreed with all of it and so applied for a remark and it went up to 50 (woo hoo. Not).

I dunno. Depends massively on the tutor. My boyfriend is a seminar tutor at uni and always tries to give really concise points to help them rather than vague statements. I think that's because he knows how annoyed I get when I don't know why I got say 69 rather than 70.

Reply 8

jelly1000

Original post by GoingToBurst

Urgh don't get me started on this, my university seems to strive to provide the most useless feedback in the world. I got a 2:1 grade on my last essay (we work on the cas scale, not percentages, it's just easier to say 2:1 than explain the whole scale haha) and honestly, I wasn't happy with it at all. The feedback? "Very commendable points, this essay was excellently focussed and all points were relevant and required to give strength to your argument. I would suggest going into more detail next time."
Ah yes, I can get loads more detail into an essay when I'm 12 words under the maximum word count. Cheers for the help.

Or my friend who got a third, "very good essay." Like seriously, are you fucking joking? You can't give someone a third class mark and not tell them why.

I get that comment on more detail, I think its not supposed to suggest you write more but that you could say what you said in a more precise way.

Reply 9

jelly1000

I don't find a lot of feedback helpful unless its very specific and tells you exactly how you can do better next time e.g. (I know this is a very small example) your bibliography needs to be on a new page. I find comments like you need more detail or your paragraphs don't flow well immensely irritating because if I knew how to correct those things I wouldn't do them in the first place. Hence I end up continually getting those comments.

I also find when the only comments I get refer to the factual content of an essay irritating because they won't help me next time as the next piece of work will be on a totally different topic.

Reply 10

Original post by jelly1000

I get that comment on more detail, I think its not supposed to suggest you write more but that you could say what you said in a more precise way.

Yeah I figured that it probably meant I could say what I'd already said in a more concise way in order to make room for the other details they wanted, but I still feel like it's kind of a silly point to make if they aren't going to recommend how to do that, haha. As you said below, if I knew how to do that then I wouldn't do it wrong to start with haha.

Original post by jelly1000

I don't find a lot of feedback helpful unless its very specific and tells you exactly how you can do better next time e.g. (I know this is a very small example) your bibliography needs to be on a new page. I find comments like you need more detail or your paragraphs don't flow well immensely irritating because if I knew how to correct those things I wouldn't do them in the first place. Hence I end up continually getting those comments.

I also find when the only comments I get refer to the factual content of an essay irritating because they won't help me next time as the next piece of work will be on a totally different topic.

Reply 11

nic-nac

15

I don't see the point in handing in drafts and the teacher telling you how to do better on coursework. It means everyone can get easy As and is the reason why coursework is starting to be scrapped ... I do think teachers should give detailed feedback after the work has been submitted though, so you know what to do differently or if something similar comes up in an exam.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 12

Airfairy

Original post by nic-nac

I don't see the point in handing in drafts and the teacher telling you how to do better on coursework. It means everyone can get easy As and is the reason why coursework is starting to be scrapped.

Yeah I agree with you in terms of GCSE/A-Level coursework. We aren't allowed to do that at my uni though. Only brief plans.

Reply 13

Klix88

17

Original post by nic-nac

I don't see the point in handing in drafts and the teacher telling you how to do better on coursework. It means everyone can get easy As and is the reason why coursework is starting to be scrapped.

That doesn't happen at uni though.

My lecturers specifically refused to read drafts, on the grounds that they couldn't do it for everyone and so it would give some an unfair advantage (it was a stated uni policy). However, you could go to them with specific questions whilst you were writing and they'd give you pointers. Most would agree to meet after work was returned, to discuss feedback if you didn't understand the comments or why marks had been lost.

Reply 14

MagicNMedicine

20

Its one of my major bugbears about feedback in general. Same happens when you apply for a job. You rarely get much feedback from interviews or assessment centres.

I've seen it from the other side when I've interviewed people for jobs eg student placements, or when I've been in charge of tender bidding processes and have to give feedback to the losing bidders. I always like to give as much detail as possible about what they did well, what they didn't, and crucially, what separated them from the ones that were appointed, as that can help them for the future.

I think what really makes people give bland feedback is fear of someone putting in an appeal or complaint, its safest to be vague. But I don't think that helps at all. I know when I write my feedback to candidates from interviews, people at work always say to me stuff like "you're taking a risk here opening yourself up to discussion if they want to challenge you on that" but nobody has complained yet.

Reply 15

doodle_333

19

Original post by Jam198

Think about it, how are you supposed to improve if you don't get "good" feedback? People go on about british education being stella, but I've found repeatedly that the feedback is not enough, students need face to face feedback and discussions and reflection after the event.

How are we supposed to learn if we don't know where we went wrong, especially if we put 100% effort into it.

Notwithstanding Tutor bias. Don't get me started on that.

at uni all my essays were marked by postgrad students and our 'feedback' and comments were generally 'good' 'fair enough' and so forth written on the essay itself and then a vague 'this is quite nice' at the end... annoyed me so much, these postgrads may have got a 2:2 or 2:1 for that module so how can they be marking first students work literally a year later

Reply 16