Reassessment toolkit: your guide to success

A good starting point for your preparation to re-sit is looking into your feedback to understand why your initial work did not meet the assessment criteria and what recommendations your marker has made on how to improve. So, don’t avoid engaging with your feedback; use it as a tool to set you off on the right path.

If your assessment was an assignment you submitted on Blackboard, then your feedback will be available there. Check out the Online assessment and Feedback guide below on how to access feedback on Blackboard for different types of submissions and, if you are struggling to locate it, contact your Student Support Coordinator for help.
If your assessment was an in-person exam, you may not have been provided with individual feedback on your performance. You may, however, be able to access your exam script and talk through it with your marker or module convenor. Contact your module convenor and Student Support Coordinator via the link below to request this. The earlier you do this, the better, as some staff may be away on leave or research activities over the summer.

Your feedback on Blackboard may have different elements, each of which can help you in different ways:

• General comments: this kind of feedback can give you an overview of how you did, and which aspects of the work require attention, according to your marker. Usually, there is a section with feed-forward actionable advice to follow.

• In-text comments: these are more detailed and specific comments on parts of the work; they can provide useful examples that explain / illustrate some of the generic comments and, sometimes, they can point towards practical changes. A useful strategy is to try to group these comments in categories, to see whether there are any recurrent issues or patterns in your work that need addressing.

• Rubric: this part of the feedback helps explain how the work was marked against each criterion. Knowing how your work was categorised can help you decide whether there are particular areas that require attention going forward. In addition, the rubric descriptors can help you visualise what your work should look like to achieve a higher mark.

Sometimes, you may find it hard to understand what your marker meant with some of their comments, or you may not be clear about which ones are more important. If you have a chance, try to meet with them to discuss your questions. Alternatively, ask them via email or contact your Academic Tutor. Study Advice is also available to help you make sense of your feedback,  especially in unpicking some of the language or terminology used.

If you requested to view your physical exam script, you will be given a chance to review it with a member of staff. In this meeting, remember they are there to answer your questions and help you do better in your resit. So, make sure you explain to them which aspects of the exam you found challenging, so you can focus your discussion on these.

Here is a list of examples to illustrate what types of questions may be most useful in your meeting:

• I am unsure what this comment means, could you give an example?
• This part of the question seems unclear, can you explain what should have been done instead?
• Could you explain this specific term?
• There are so many comments, what should I prioritise for next time?
• I find this topic challenging, could you recommend one good introductory resource?
• I was not sure how to approach this question, can we break down the process?

• Also, see this webinar on Feedback as a Tool for Learning from Life Tools.