Marking, feedback and grading V3
The following article provides an overview of marking, grading, and feedback processes under the Southern Cross Model. Please see the further resources at the end of the article for specific guidance.
What does marking look like in the Southern Cross Model?
The Southern Cross Model framework ensures fair assessments and constructive feedback to support students' learning journey. Marking is an integrated element of the entire assessment cycle, from designing assessment tasks to grading and providing student feedback.
Given the short 6-week terms of the Southern Cross Model, maintaining consistent and efficient marking strategies and providing students concise, actionable feedback is crucial. Awareness and adherence to the relevant university assessment policies and guidelines; including rubrics, moderation, and the grades process, will support effective and efficient marking, grading, and feedback. These are briefly covered in the next section.
Stages of the Assessment Cycle
In this article, our focus is on Marking, feedback and Grading in the assessment cycle. Find out more about the Assessment Cycle.
The assessment processes under the Southern Cross Model involve six key stages, as illustrated in the following graphic.
Stage 4: Marking students' work
The fourth stage of marking, feedback and grading pertains to making judgements about students' work. Once students have submitted their assessments, marking begins while the calibration and moderation process continues.
When making judgements about students' work:
- Focus on the Learning Outcomes of the assignment, how successfully they have been achieved in this assignment, and what can be done to improve.
- Use your professional expertise to assess how successfully each criterion has been met and mark the student accordingly. Aim to do this with accuracy, consistency, and transparency.
- Avoid making judgments based on personal preferences that are not reflected by the Unit Assessor. The marking team must be alert for any unconscious bias about particular students, their views, or abilities.
- Be mindful of grade variance or slippage during long marking sessions, often resulting from fatigue.
Check Grade Center before you mark!
All Unit Assessors are advised to ensure that their Grade Center is correctly set up before the team commences marking – to maintain grade integrity and ensure the grades process runs smoothly with no surprises. The following resource provides detailed guidance: Setting up your Grade Centre.
Digital Tools that support Marking, Grading and Feedback
The following digital tools are used at Southern Cross University to support marking, grading, and feedback.
- Blackboard Grading within the Grade Centre
- Using Turnitin rubrics for grading: Turnitin rubrics for grading
- Using Blackboard rubrics with Turnitin: Blackboard rubrics for grading
- Using Blackboard rubrics with Voicethread: Voicethread
- Using Blackboard Rubrics for other assessments: Blackboard assignments
- Releasing feedback for Blackboard quizzes: Blackboard tests
- Marking group assessments: Group assessments
Stage 5: Providing feedback and grades to students
Providing feedback and grades to students is an essential step that completes the assessment cycle. High-quality feedback provides students with a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses in their learning, promoting self-reflection. Timely and constructive feedback can enhance student motivation and engagement. Feedback helps students set realistic and achievable goals and foster a growth mindset that builds lifelong learners.
When providing feedback to students:
- Organise your feedback around three central points. One point may be acknowledging what has been done well. The remaining two points could focus on practical things they could do to improve their current grade.
- Ensure the feedback is pitched to the right level. Remember, feedback is teaching. Ask yourself what is optimal for this student to hear at this point in their development (e.g. first year). Don’t overload your feedback with issues beyond their grasp. Use the marking rubric to guide the feedback necessary for each criterion.
- Consider using a feedback template to ensure consistency and efficiency of marking. An example feedback template can be accessed here: SCU College Feedback Template (login required).
Collective feedback encourages students
Consider providing collective feedback to support students to engage with feedback. This feedback might reiterate the Learning Outcomes of the assignment, noting areas that were handled well by most students, common misunderstandings, and how students can improve. This may include a discussion about the next integrated assessment task.
Collective feedback can be incorporated into a class workshop or shared as an announcement via the Blackboard learning site.
For more information about feedback, see Strategies for providing feedback.
Further Resources
You can access further detailed marking, feedback, and grading resources from the links below. Click the arrows to expand the listed sections to view more specific articles.