Our exam review day was spent largely discussing the system we used. The comments included:
- Students liked the evaluation forms and found them useful in figuring out what happened on the evaluation and how to improve
- Liked not having 'marks' but found it difficult communicating their progress to their parents. The most vocal student said her father would keep asking 'But what's your mark?' Others had similar experiences.
- Liked receiving general feedback on assignments and found that to be most helpful
- Missed more specific feedback on tests and found it difficult to understand the general comments
I find the last two points interesting on reflection. Did my students look at the tests as a series of separate mini-evaluations like I did? When I evaluated them each question usually matched a specific expectation. I would evaluate each question and write down the result next to the question. As much as possible I avoided numbers but used them on occasion.