Evaluating an earlybird scheme: encouraging early assignment writing and revising

Abstract

It is widely suggested that feedback on assignments is useful to students’ learning, however, little research has examined how this feedback may be provided in large classes or the actual effects of such a scheme. We designed and implemented a voluntary ‘earlybird scheme’ that provided detailed feedback to undergraduate Business students on a first draft of a literature review. We then evaluated the effect of this scheme on students’ final marks for the assignment, the scheme’s usage, and students’ perceptions of the scheme. We found that although the usage of the scheme was quite low, it increased the learning of the students who did use it. The most common reason for not using the scheme was a lack of time and, therefore, given the beneficial nature of the scheme overall, we suggest that future implementations include greater structure or a complementary time‐management workshop.

Keywords:

• assessment
• feedback
• literature reviews