Grade-related Marking Criteria for Assessed Blogs

The development of these grade-related marking criteria has been led by Dr Nina Morris (School of GeoSciences) and Dr Hazel Christie (Institute for Academic Development). They are an outcome of a University of Edinburgh Principal’s Teaching Award funded project ‘Every student a researcher: supporting the use of blogging as a form of student assessment’. They provide a marking template for academic staff who wish to incorporate assessed blogs into their undergraduate or postgraduate curriculum and are designed to be adapted to suit individual course needs; not all comments will be relevant to every blog assessment – please delete elements as appropriate.

If you adopt these marking criteria (regardless of how you adapt them) we would be grateful if you could let us know at N.Morris@ed.ac.uk or Hazel.Christie@ed.ac.uk.

The assessment criteria for each grade include paragraphs relating to:

CONTENT: knowledge (i.e. range, command of material, awareness of scholarship), application of theory (i.e. use and relevance of examples, connection of course themes to wider world), argument/analysis (i.e. focus, clarity of structure, analytical skills, evaluation and evidence), self-reflection (i.e. progress of project, contribution to group, group performance).

PRESENTATION: language and expression (i.e. clarity and accuracy, grammar and syntax, spelling, fluency of writing), genre-specific features (i.e. content indicators, use of images and/or audio-visual material, use of hyperlinks), scholarly apparatus (i.e. accuracy and consistency of referencing, accuracy and consistency of bibliography, due consideration of data protection with regards to images and audio-visual material, image copyright), and accessibility (i.e. overall appearance, media, writing).

PRACTICE: self-reflection and critical reflection on group efficacy.
The original template for these criteria was the University of Edinburgh Geography Degree Programme Grade Related Marking Criteria. We have also drawn on:

Badenhorst, C. & Mather, C. (2014) Blogging geographies, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 38(2), 193-207.

Brendell, N. (2017) Using weblogs to determine the levels of student reflection in global education. In C. Brooks, G. Butt and M. Fargher (Eds.) The Power of Geographical Thinking. London: Springer, pp.119-135.

Dunleavy, P. (2014) Shorter, better, faster, free: Blogging changes the nature of academic research, not just how it is communicated. LSE Blogs.

We are grateful to colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, Andrew Gardiner (Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies), Karen Howie (Information Services), Kate Saunders (School of GeoSciences), Iraklis Pantopoulos (Edinburgh College of Art), and Kirsten Lloyd (Edinburgh College of Art), for their comments on an earlier version.

June 2020