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The University of Southampton
Researching Assessment Practices (RAP)

Film Studies

Veronica Spencer

Faculty of Humanities

Discipline: Film Studies

Focus:  To develop students’ assessment literacy and self-evaluation abilities

Film Studies as taught at the University of Southampton is a conceptual programme, engaging with film theory, history, industry, and entertainment in a national and global context.  Students studying Film often enter with good A levels in cognate Humanities subjects but without having studied Film before.  We held informal discussion groups with students in first-year seminars in semester one, 2016-17.  As a result, we decided to design our project to develop the students’ assessment literacy to provide them with firm support for their entry into a new discipline, to improve their outcomes, and eventually to lead to better self-regulation. 

Using the EAT framework, the project was structured in three parts to investigate:   

  1. if the students understood what constituted a good essay within Film Studies, not having studied Film before;
  2. if they understood the standards and marking criteria on which their Film-specific feedback is based;
  3. if they understood the tutors’ comments and how to translate feedback into actions. 

Three workshops corresponding to each of the above areas were held with the students during semester two.  The participants completed four detailed survey forms at the start of the semester and the same forms at its end.  The data analysis will inform the second stage of the project for 2017-18.

 

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