As an old hand who has designed programmes in 3 institutions in my time, and
have been or am external examiner to many more, my experience is that
pass/not-yet-pass is the safest option.
Places which opt for a distinction etc end up spending more time in
assessment boards arguing about who is 'distinguished' and who is
'not-so-distinguished' than who has passed/not-yet-passed. The usual problem
is that some candidates provide at least one piece of work which is reallly
distinguished, but others which are more 'ordinary'.
Reminds you of assessing students? Of course - it should!
It can be useful to find other ways to reward the odd candidate who is
really 'distinguished', for example a personal letter from the Chair of the
Assessment Board to the candidate (not their HoD) reflecting on the comments
from the assessors involved (perhaps accompanied by the award of a book
token).
One problem is that 'distinction' is easily confused with 'producing
evidence organised and presented with distinction' rather than 'being
distinguished' at teaching. Hard luck on the candidate who achieves the
latter but not the former.
And worse, if there are 'distinctions' and 'merits', what would students
think of being taught by someone who had ONLY 'passed'?
Let's face it, our assessment instruments, processes and practices aren't
really up to the job of making fine decisions between 'definitely
distinguished', 'perhaps distinguished', 'a clear merit' and so on, when
we're talking about complex assessments (e.g. portfolios) with a number of
different 'facets' of varying importance.
Furthermore, I have found that even when just heading towards
'pass/not-yet-pass' decisions, is can be useful to have a four-point scale
for decisions on the individual components adding up to the final award,
each being rated:
'clear pass' 'borderline pass' 'borderline refer' and 'clear refer'
with the final decision being made on an 'overall' basis, considering the
relative importance of the separate components.
I well remember the problem I experienced as an external with a candidate
who had 'passed' six out of eight modules on a particular teaching and
learning in higher education programme, but 'failed' two (on repeated
attempts). The two were 'teaching large groups' and 'teaching small groups'.
The Assessment Board argued long and hard over the merits of the six modules
passed. However, the candidate meanwhile had been sacked from the Department
for being found to be 'unable to teach students', irrespective of the
course.
I hope this is helpful.
Phil Race
----- Original Message -----
From: David Andrew <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 11:57 AM
Subject: ILT accredited programmes
> A quick question for those institutions running ILT accredited programmes
> at M level - do you asess in terms of pass/fail, grades or percentages?
>
> We are validating an MA at UNL and it would be useful to know for our
> validation.
>
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