Students on a final year module in health psychology took a multiple choice class test under exam conditions some weeks ago. This was administered online and gave them their marks and feedback right away - thus meeting our demanding new targets for providing timely student feedback - a key element in getting good student satisfaction scores and rising up the university league tables.
Unfortunately the marking key that had been provided had some errors in it. A couple of students noticed that they'd been marked as wrong for answers they were sure they'd gotten right. I have spent many hours in the interim checking all 100 questions and regrading all students' papers manually. Rather than being a quick and easy way to objectively assess students this turned out to be very time consuming and difficult - urgh. What didn't help was that every students' virtual test 'paper' had the questions numbered differently and presented in a randomised order. This technical wheeze is meant to make it less likely that students sitting at adjacent PCs might be tempted to copy each others' answers. It also made it a pain to identify the problem items when regrading them by hand.
Much simpler was my exam essay marking for M99PY Management of Chronic Illness and Disability. Only nine candidates, with two essays each. Very low tech (and arguably less objective), but much more pleasant to do. All the scripts are anonymised and I now hand them over to a colleague who will sample some and second mark them to check that the grading standard is appropriate and consistent.
The tedium was relieved today by a brief launch lunch, to celebrate the creation of a new academic department. Our faculty has just been restructured. Psychology will now be joined by colleagues from Clinical Psych, Criminology and Forensic and Investigative Studies, to form a new department called Psychology and Behavioural Sciences.
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