The use of assessment criteria is to make the marking of student work transparent.  It is no longer acceptable to say ‘I know a 2:1 piece of work when I see it’.  Even in this situation the marker has criteria against which they are judging the student in mind.  Assessment criteria ensure that the same criteria are used from student to student and students are aware at the time of completing the assignment how it will be assessed.

Assessment criteria provide information to students on one or both of the following:

• The factors that you will take into account when marking a piece of work or an examination.
• The standards that a student has to achieve on each criteria to be awarded a mark within a particular grade level (60-69% say).  Often these are put together to give an overall description of the requirements for a class of mark.  These descriptors should make specific reference to the task set and benchmarked against the University's Conceptual Equivalent Scale.
• Sometimes the standards against each criterion are set out.  When this is the case then it is essential that students are aware that not all the criteria will be equally weighted.