Incorporating Drafting into Extended Response Assessment Tasks

With the advent of NESA's stipulations for HSC Assessment, in which students may only sit one formal examination per subject (including essays set in this fashion), there is now an increased need to senior students to practise the writing of extended responses in a meaningful fashion. Prior to the new rules, students might have written essays in assessable conditions anywhere up to 3 or 4 times across their final schooling year, but now this is no longer possible.

One way to get around this is to incorporate drafting into an assessable essay. This takes away the formalised examination context and - in the spirit of what NESA is hoping for - allows for a less stressful approach to essay writing in which students can engage with assessment as learning. 

There are two examples here for different subject areas, both of which were written for the older syllabus that ended this year. Regardless of your KLA, it's worth checking out both of them as they represent different approaches to the drafting process.

• Advanced English Example

• Modern History Example

Both tasks utilise an analytical marking criteria (as opposed to the holistic style rubrics used for HSC marking). It's a different way to mark than what we may be used to, however, it's imperative to use an analytical-styled criteria when undertaking assessment as learning as it allows the students to identify specific skills they can work on to consolidate strengths and address weaknesses. 

The holistic marking grid (in which student ability is represented in bands of grouped criteria) is specifically designed as the absolute end point of the learning process, IE. This style of criteria gets used for HSC marking because the students don't get to see how they're marked at this point. An analytical marking grid (in which specific skills are addressed with their own independent marks) is designed to offer meaningful feedback to the student, and this is often what a lot of Australian universities use for their humanities courses when demonstrating to students what criteria they need to address when submitting assignments.

Anyway! In terms of the resources attached above:

The Advanced English task requires students to submit a draft at some point before the final submission date. In terms of making their drafting visible to the marker, 5 of the 25 marks have been allocated to a reflection statement that they must attach to their final submission. 

The Modern History task strips back the differentiation of skills (it's only a 15 mark response) in order to take the pressure off students who are being asked to do multiple drafts. The drafting process is incorporated here as a non-mandatory due date, which works as thus:

• Students submit a draft about one week before the final due date. Students can't be penalised if they don't submit at this time - it isn't mandatory and it isn't the final due date.
• The teacher marks the drafts and gives them back to the students with feedback.
• Students have an option to re-submit on the final due date for re-marking. If they choose not to do this then they take the mark they've already been given instead.

Roughly half the students in this scenario re-submit a new draft for marking. The other half aren't interested in "doing the assessment task twice" and will take the mark they've been initially given. It turns out to be a remarkably efficient approach as you get to finalise marks for half the students before the final due date.  

I'll write another blog down the track once I've had a chance to develop more assessments in response to the new syllabus.