Understanding Assessment

Your skills will be assessed in a number of different ways over the course of your degree. We have put together guides that will talk you through what is expected and how to make the most out of each type of assessment. We have also included annotated marking criteria here, so you can understand the marks you receive.

Visit our Assessment page on the History Undergraduate Student Hub for information on the likes of deadlines, word limits, and unfair means. 

Assessment guides

These guides explain our main forms of assessment. What do they involve, why do we use them, what skills do they test, how are they evaluated, and how can you do well? Your module tutor will also have suggestions for specifics relating to particular assessments. The guides often link to further resources on History Hacks, at the 301 Skills Centre, and elsewhere. Some of them feature sample marked work.

Making sense of the marking criteria

Feedback from students has included requests for a clearer sense of how we interpret criteria. Over the summer of 2022-23, we annotated the different marking criteria for different types of assessment. You can take a look at the documents here. Most take key phrases from the 1st class and 2:2 descriptors (use the full marking criteria for 2:1 and other ranges) and use footnotes to elaborate on what we're looking for in each case. 

Avoiding Unfair Means

We expect students to adhere to high ethical standards in preparing their work. Above all, this means that for individual assessment the work you submit should be your own. If you're unsure of what constitutes the use of unfair means, take a look at the guidance below. The History Hacks quiz has a range of scenarios that will help you understand how to draw the line between what we'd encourage (e.g. collaborative learning) and what we prohibut (the likes of collusion, essay buying and AI generation, and plagiarism).