I began teaching psychology in the late 1980s, and then decided to become an examiner to gain insight into the exam process, the idea being to incorporate these pearls of wisdom into my teaching and pass them on to my students for their benefit. So has my examining benefited my students? I assumed that examining consisted of being given a list of things to look for in each answer, scripts plopping through the letter box and being left to get on with it, with the occasional check to ensure it was being done properly.
How wrong can you be? Examining is more of an art than a science. Before you panic about impressionist marking, let me explain. I mean that there are few cut-and-dry ‘correct’ answers. More commonly, examiners are given guidelines about what might be included in an answer and what would not be creditworthy. The examiner’s task is to assess the quality of what is written. Consider this exam-style question: ‘Give limitations of using questionnaires.’
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