evaluation of essay previously written by one of your writers 81617244
Order Description
EVALUATING STAGE GUIDANCE
Introduction
This handout covers the third, and final stage of your investigation. This involves evaluating how effective your investigation has been.
There are a number of ways in which you must evaluate your work, both in terms of your Planning stage and your Developing stage. You must do this by:
• Assessing the extent to which you met your original Objectives;
• Commenting on aspects of your investigation process that worked effectively, and those that worked less effectively;
• Discussing the strengths and weaknesses of your Developing stage submission;
• Making recommendations for future investigations.
You will be required to submit a final piece of work evidencing that you have fully evaluated your investigation, and as before for most students this will take the form of a piece of writing. This submission will be similar to the Planning stage, both in terms of length and style. It will be marked out of 20, and so you must attain at least 10 marks to pass. The approximate word count is 1,000 words, so your submission must be between 900 and 1,100 words.
The Evaluating stage is the part of this investigation that, on average, candidates have most difficulty with. This is partly because you might never have had to do it before, and also because evaluating oneself honestly is in itself quite tricky. The most important thing to remember when undertaking this stage is that you are not being assessed on the outcome of your investigation, but on your ability to reflect on it – even if you think your investigation went terribly, you can still achieve an excellent mark in your Evaluating stage by reflecting on why that happened!
Assessing the extent to which you met your original Objectives
The first thing you should consider is whether or not your investigation actually achieved what you intended it to. You should do this by looking at your original Objectives (i.e. those you identified in your Planning stage) and, taking each in turn, explain the extent to which you addressed them in your Developing stage.
You should mention any modifications that were made to your Objectives during your Developing stage, explaining what you changed and why. For example, perhaps one of the Objectives you set was simply not achievable given your eventual time frame, or perhaps you realised that it would be better to look at a certain issue from a different perspective.
If you made no changes at all and believe that you achieved your Objectives fully, you might feel that this section is particularly challenging. In this case, you should make sure that your assertions are fully evidenced, perhaps by referencing the relevant parts of your Developing stage submission.
Remember that you will be awarded marks for the quality of your discussion and not for whether you actually succeeded in meeting your objectives. It is better to be as honest as you can, even if things did not work out as well as you had hoped.
Commenting on aspects of your investigation process
In this section, you must consider what worked effectively during your Planning stage and Developing stage in terms of the investigation process. The investigation “process” means the various tasks that you completed as part of your investigation, such as choosing a topic, drafting your Timetable, conducting your research, and so on.
You must comment on which of these tasks you feel you undertook effectively, and why. Did you find choosing a topic easy? If so, what made the choice so simple? Did you feel that you used your time well during the research phase of your Developing stage? If so, justify this by explaining why.
You must also comment on anything you did that you felt did not work effectively. Did you struggle to follow your Timetable? If so, why? Did you leave yourself only a short time to do your final write-up? If so, what impact did this have on your eventual submission?
Remember that, as with many parts of the Evaluating stage, honesty is the best policy!
Discussing the strengths and weaknesses of your Developing stage submission
It is easy to confuse this section with the previous one. They are similar, in the sense that you are being asked to evaluate your performance. However, there is a key distinction between this section and the last; here, you must discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your Developing stage submission, i.e. the piece of work that you handed in.
The best way to explain this is that you must take the role of an examiner; someone who receives a piece of work with no prior knowledge of how it came to be, and must assess it based solely on what is front of him (or her). For this section, you must attempt to distance yourself from your work, and assess it dispassionately as an examiner would. In so doing, you must identify the strengths and weaknesses of the work, and give clear justifications for your opinions – exactly as would expect an examiner to!
There are a few points worth noting about this. Firstly, it is not easy. You will likely be very familiar with the work you submitted – you might even feel you are sick of the sight of it! This familiarity can make critiquing the work difficult, almost as if you “can’t see the wood for the trees”. It might be a good idea to leave this assessment until a few weeks after you have submitted the Developing stage, to allow time for some of the familiarity to fade. (Your submission dates will likely be sufficiently staggered to allow for this.)
Another point is that many people find self-assessment uncomfortable. Some feel that they should not praise their own work because to do so would be boastful and uncouth. Others, at the other end of the spectrum, can’t even consider the possibility that their work could be anything less than perfect! No matter what your natural tendency is, you must force yourself to do this task if you want to score highly – and at the risk of repetition, the best way forward is to be as honest and impartial as you can.
A final point regarding this section is that it must be your own assessment of the work’s strengths and weaknesses, not that of your Tutor. Of course, you will be given feedback on your Developing stage submission, but you must not simply repeat this feedback as if it were your own opinion. Remember that your Tutor will be able to spot this very easily if you try to get away with doing it!
Making recommendations for future investigations
In this final section, you must set out some recommendations for the future based on your experience in carrying out this investigation. These recommendations must be based on your considerations of the previous three sections, and so the approach you take in this section will be influenced by your overall evaluation.
If you were generally critical of your investigation during the previous three sections, it makes sense for your recommendations in this section to reflect that. Having established in previous sections why something went wrong, here you must think about how it could be put right next time. To return to an earlier point, demonstrating an ability to learn from your mistakes can attract very good marks here, so even if your investigation went badly all is not lost in terms of your final grade!
It might be the case that everything, generally, went okay during your investigation. This clearly restricts you in terms of identifying what you would do differently next time. However, just because everything went well, that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement. If you aren’t able to identify any specific problems to be solved, you can instead consider in this section how your investigation could be enhanced in the future, for example by broadening the scope, or by approaching the topic from a different perspective. It is just as acceptable to make recommendatio
ns of this nature.
Writing Up Your Evaluating Stage
As always, you must provide evidence of your work, and this will likely be a written submission of around 1,000 words. Your Evaluating stage submission is a formal piece of writing, but it does not have to be as formal as the Developing stage. You are encouraged to write-up your Evaluating stage in the First Person style, exactly as you did in the Planning stage. This means that you should use “I did…”, “I believe that…” and so on. You do not have to write it in this style, but you will likely find it easier if you do.
For each of the four sections outlined above, you should aim to write about 250 words. The logical order of the sections means that a structure is already established for your write-up – start with a brief overview of what you hoped to achieve during your investigation, and work through the sections until you make your recommendations. Provided you work hard to complete the tasks required of you in Evaluating stage, the process of writing up should actually be quite simple.
Marking Guidelines for the Evaluating Stage
Your Evaluating Stage submission will be marked out of 20, and you must attain at least 10 marks in order to pass. Marks will be awarded based on the following factors:
• The accuracy with which you can assess the extent to which your original Objectives were met;
• The quality of your explanations and justifications regarding what worked effectively and what worked less effectively, including your ability to judge the impact of this on your eventual submission;
• The quality of your assessment of your submission’s strengths and weaknesses, including the validity of your justifications;
• The credibility of your recommendations based on your previous considerations.
Intro
The Evaluating stage is the final part of your Graded Unit 3 report
In it, you must evaluate your Planning Stage (PS) and Developing Stage (DS)
Can use 1st person, i.e. “I” “me” etc.
800-1200 words
20 marks available – 10 required to pass
Must be submitted via Turnitin by 5pm on Friday 10th June
Evaluating Stage Outline
Four sections:
Brief outline of investigation, and assessment of whether objectives were met
Commentary on what worked effectively during PS & DS, and on what worked less effectively
Assessment of specific strengths and weaknesses of your DS submission
Recommendations for future investigations
Section 1: Objectives
Briefly outline your investigation
Consider whether objectives were met
Mention any modifications made – and why
Comment on rejected courses of action
Marks are given for quality of discussion and reflection – not results of investigation
Be honest, even if things went wrong
Section 2: Effectiveness
Comment on aspects of PS & DS that worked well in terms of your processes (what you did, e.g. choosing a topic, doing research, writing up)
Comment on aspects that didn’t work well
Marks are given for quality of explanations and justifications
Again, be honest
Section 3: Strengths & Weaknesses
“Self-assess” your DS submission
Explain at least one specific strength of your submission
Explain at least one specific weakness of your submission
Explain why you consider them as such
Marks are given for credibility of reasons and validity of justifications
Section 4: Recommendations
Set out recommendations for future investigations
Consider your own development – how could you take this investigation further?
Consider what other possible avenues of investigation could be taken into the topic
Marks are given for matching up your recommendations with your comments in the previous sections, and for these being credible and well thought-out
?