on Self-Assessment

RMIT has a teaching policy that encourages and fosters peer and self-assessment. The idea being that by third year undergraduates are self-assessing most of their own work and practice.

When I first started teaching at RMIT I didn't really 'get it' and saw self-assessment as an easy opportunity for students to exploit. These days I think self-assessment is a really good idea because it weans students off being dependent on external affirmation and helps them develop self-confidence and independence.

Peer assessment is also good because it makes the value of a 'high distinction' or 'credit' determined by the 'student market'. Which I think is a legitimate way to go. If they slather HDs amongst themselves, it should make them wonder about the actual worth of an HD when they get one...

In industry, which is where my students are heading, you don't get a neat numerical score for your efforts and a grade that clearly marks your place in the pack - standards are relative, sometimes you appear to have done very well just because the competition is weak, quality of work can get confused with how enjoyable you are to work with – or how much they like you, or how similar your ideas/take is to their own, people rarely tell you what they think and tend not to tell you things you don’t want to hear because it makes them feel uncomfortable – sometimes the only way you know you have done poorly is because you don’t get another gig with the company, sometimes people just piss in your pocket as a way to get you to do more stuff – sometimes people don’t tell you how great your work is because they think you know this already.... Etc... And that the only way to traverse these fuzzy shifting confusing planes is to know, in yourself, what the work is ‘worth’ - both in relation to your own personal set of standards and in relation to the quality of work produced around you.