The purpose of this paper is to outline the background to the introduction of peer assessment at the University of Ulster and to report on how the project has operated and developed over the past three years. Initially assessors were drawn from the same student year group as the performers (BMus, year 2). The process was monitored by the authors who subsequently met with each assessment panel to discuss the performances before marks and reports were finalised. In the following years the assessment of second-year performances was conducted by panels of final-year students; this resulted in more objective reporting.
This article considers the transition from school to university in Music and Music Technology, continuing the discussion of transitional issues which began in Volume 2 of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education. The focus of the article is a survey of undergraduates, examining areas that were key to their first experience of studying for a degree, such as entry qualifications, course choice, career prospects, difficult aspects of the course and aspects they felt well-prepared for. These data were supplemented with teacher and lecturer interviews and a university staff questionnaire. The findings demonstrate that student perceptions of undergraduate music study are sometimes at odds with those of the university staff. In the light of the changing nature, interests and needs of these students, it is timely to rethink both what it is intended to achieve and how this is going to be assessed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.