Hi All
Well I got my result today. Firstly I'm very impressed by the promptness of these returns, I often set a 2 week deadline for my own learners getting their results back. The longer it is left the more difficult it is to relate to the feedback.
I got 71%. I'm happy with that grade as I set a goal of anything over 65%. Taking into account the learning culture shock I have experienced on this course, and not being familiar with OU assessment I found it quite a difficult assignment {see previous blogs}. I am interested to know what the results of others were to give some perspective.
I was also impressed with the amount of feedback. At this point I have only read the initial comments and skimmed through rest. I actually think there's probably as much in comment as their is in my original essay. Sometimes when there's that much detail it can affect the seriousness in which it is accepted, this is feedback for the feedbackers! What do others think about the quantity of feedback?
Also, assessors may want to reconsider the correction of grammar, as an assessor I find spelling errors frustrating and often a sign of laziness, as a learner I'm embarassed to note my errors. But grammar and structure of sentences is often subjective and I'm averse to seeing my words crossed out and re-written. if you do not think I made my point correctly fine, but at postgrad level I don't believe these "corrections" are necessary. Again what do others think?
More blogs due in Unit 6!
Karl
Comments
Something about feedback
Thinking about types of feedback, one of the main reasons for providing very detailed feedback for TMA01 is that it gives course participants an idea of the level we're expecting in future. While feedback for TMA02 is thorough, it doesn't (usually) go into the same amount of detail as for TMA01.Like you, I'm always horrified when I see my spelling / grammatical errors, but I've got used to having them pointed out over the years as I submit articles for review and publication
Sometimes, too, it can be difficult to know whether an error is a 'slip' or something the author really doesn't know, so it's usually better, in my experience, to flag it up, "just in case"; for example, a commonly-occurring error (it pops up in publicly available material all the time - I'm particularly aware of estate agents' leaflets including this one!) is compliment and complement They're completely different things, but because they sound the same, people often confuse the spellings. Of course, a spell checker won't pick this one up, since both are real words, correctly spelled.
Another one is would of instead of the grammatically correct would have. Again, this is based on the sound - would've sounds much more like would of than would have; I spotted this one in a magazine article a couple of weeks ago, and it's becoming more common.
My pet bugbear is the misuse of apostrophes. I am one of those people who goes into shops to point out the error on the A board! One carrot, two carrots, I insist, not carrot's (unless we're discussing this carrot's origin or flavour, of course!)
So, in summary, TMA01 always generates a lot of different types of feedback, for the reasons given here