Making the Most of Monitoring

• Project Team: Sue Nieland
• Subject Discipline: Psychology and Counselling
• Theme: Assessment
• Project Aim: Enables more students to achieve their study goalsImproves and enhance the learning experience of students
• Status: Complete
• Date: January 2020 to September 2020

As one of the largest universities in Europe, and the largest in the UK, the quantity of assessment that has to be carried out by tutors at the Open University is far greater than in most institutions. The Open University routinely processes over 600,000 assignments in a year.  A sample of those go through a form of peer review to ensure the quality of assessment, through scrutiny of both feedback and evidence of standardised application of the marking criteria. This research project focused upon the process of monitoring from the experiences of both tutors and monitors, to identify areas of good and weaker practice and explore how improvements could be made, and how valuable the role is seen to be by both those who carry it out and those who receive the monitoring reports.   

As a result of the research, it was possible to identify exemplary practice and a genuine desire for monitors to be more recognised for the work they do, and for the professionalisation and collegiate nature of the role to be developed. During this research, significant changes were being made to the monitoring process and these were found to be in line with the research findings. However, the project also highlighted that further work is needed to raise the profile of the monitoring role to a more professional and recognised status, and to further encourage and support  dialogical relationships between tutors and monitors , with reassurance and recognition of good practice as well as exploitation of training opportunities and improving quality of formative assessment.