- Ensuring assessment requirements are understood by all students
- Adapting procedures to promote race equality
- Encouraging inclusion
- Scheduling
- Plagiarism
RACIAL EQUALITY CONSIDERATIONS IN ASSESSMENT
Can assessment instruments and procedures be re-examined to encourage inclusion?
- Assessment criteria could be reappraised with additional or different success criteria in place e.g. 'the ability to engage with critical reflection' could be assessed as well as the 'the ability to summarise information from a variety of sources'.
- Consider continuous assessment, where possible.
- Make explicit the grading scheme for the course.
- Implement anonymous marking or double marking, particularly for project work.
- Assessment criteria could be focused on what is central to the module or course element. When assessment demands coherence of structure, evidence of critical engagement with concepts, and ability to posit arguments intellectually, explicit briefs could be provided as to what these mean in terms of assessment tasks so that all students are conversant with the requirements.
- Student performance/attrition rates could be monitored across different ethnic groups. Monitoring ethnicity is a specific duty requirement under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.
School of Medicine
Acknowledgement and understanding of potentially diverse values, perspectives and doctor/patient circumstances are assessed both through written work (modified essay/problem-solving and extended matching questions) and as part of structured clinical examinations throughout the undergraduate course. Specific scenarios are posed to ascertain if students have actively engaged with the issues as part of their learning. Some examples include
- requesting informed consent for a patient who is a Jehovah's Witness who is about to undergo abdominal surgery for repair of an aortic abdominal aneurysm (members of this faith have deep religious convictions against accepting homologous or autologous whole blood, packed red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets)
- explaining the need for a pelvic examination to the parents of a teenage girl whose upbringing comes from within a modest tradition (some traditions and cultures are very sensitive to any perceived violation linked to virginity).
