Effectiveness of Assessment Exemplars in a Business Management Course

Samples of past and present student work should not just be kept away in the faculty drawers, cabinets or simply stored in the digital space. There are many benefits from these valuable pieces of work that can be shared with their peers and future students. By sharing and showing these exemplars, students understand better the expectations for their own work to obtain good grades. They not only learn to benchmark their work against their peers and understand the assessment requirements better, but most importantly, exemplars provide them guidance when undertaking a piece of assessment. This action research explores the use of assessment exemplars and its effectiveness on Business Management students in a pre-university programme at a private university in Malaysia. A basic qualitative approach using focus group discussions was adopted. Four major themes on the impact of assessment exemplars emerged from the focus group discussions, namely assessment exemplars provide guidance, make students aware of standards and expectations, provide motivation to start writing, and builds confidence. This study provides insights into understanding students’ experience in using exemplars in the preuniversity context.