ABSTRACT
Imagine that students are briefed to self-assess their efforts at the point of submitting the work for tutor assessment, and are supplied with a pro forma, of no more than two pages’ length, for this self-assessment. Suppose that the pro forma consists of a dozen or so short, structured questions, asking students to make particular reflective comments upon the work they are handing in, and that the principal purposes behind these questions are to:
• get students to reflect on what they have done;
• give tutors assessing their work additional information about ‘where each student is’ in relation to the tasks they have just attempted;
• form a productive agenda to help tutors to focus their feedback most usefully;
• save tutors time by helping them to avoid telling students things about their submitted work that they know all too clearly already;
• give students a sense of ownership of the most important elements of feedback that they are going to receive on the work they have submitted.
