Student Self-assessment and self-grading in Archaeology

Assessment is an important and necessary part of teaching and learning in the tertiary education sector. Boud and Falchikov have identified two key elements in any assessment decision - 'the identification of criteria or standards to be applied to one's work, and making of judgements about the extent to which work meets these criteria' (Boud and Falchikov, 1989:529). Self-assessment can include a wide range of practices which encourage students to think critically about what they are learning, to identify appropriate standards of performance (self-developed criteria) and to apply them to their own work (Boud 1986:1). Self-grading is only a limited aspect of self assessment but provides students with the opportunity to reflect on the quality of an individual piece of their work against a set of given, rather than self-developed, criteria.