Key Findings

The key findings from the project included:

• Overwhelmingly, lecturers in the study recognised the value in using exemplars to support student learning. They realised that notions of quality, critical to assessment success, were often tacitly held inside a lecturer’s head, hidden from students and/or open to interpretation. To address this, lecturers had developed both an awareness and appreciation of the unique role exemplars can play in regard to developing students’ understandings of the nature of the task and what constitutes quality.
• Lecturers’ exemplar practice was to a certain degree reflective of their understanding of the role that emotions play in learning. Lecturers’ awareness that emotions have an impact on student commitment, motivation and their overall outcomes influenced not only their selection of exemplars but also the way in which they were used.
• While not always overtly expressed, lecturers’ overarching aim in using exemplars was to support students’ successful completion of an assessment task. Lecturers recognised that for students to do so, they needed both evaluative knowledge and expertise and productive knowledge and expertise.

Key Recommendations

The project identified a number of potential projects for future research:

A more diverse range of faculties and contexts | There is a need for similar projects to be conducted in faculties and tertiary contexts other than Education. Locating the research in a diverse range of faculties and contexts would contribute to our understanding of how and why lecturers use exemplars. Such research would also provide additional insights into whether or not there are contextual or disciplinary differences that impact on their use.

Use of exemplars in performance-based disciplines or in the sciences | To date, the research agenda has focused on the use of exemplars to improve the quality of students’ written work, yet there are many disciplines that require students to go beyond the written word to demonstrate their competence. How exemplars are used in performance-based disciplines or in the sciences would extend our understanding of how a range of discipline-specific artefacts and associated practices might be used to support the development of students’ evaluative and productive capabilities.

Classroom observations | Observations undertaken within the naturalistic setting of the ‘classroom’ provide unique insights into practice that cannot be captured by any other means. Undertaken in a principled manner, observations enable researchers to attend to a selective set of phenomena. Studies that utilise observational methods, capturing the dialogue between and among lecturers and students, would make a valuable contribution to the field.

Reasons for the non-use of exemplars | A study looking at reasons for the non-use of exemplars is a further possibility – this would provide us with a fuller understanding of lecturers’ motives, beliefs and concerns, and whether their non-use is due to reluctance or resistance. It could also provide insights into the best ways in which lecturers could be supported to incorporate exemplars into their practice.