An Experiment in the Assessment of Composition

Abstract

This article describes an experiment in the assessment of composition by group consensus. It was designed to prove that small groups of assessors confronted with only aural evidence of particular compositions could, when using suitable criteria, under certain working conditions, come to similar enough judgements on these compositions to prove the method reliable. The method itself was based on the sessions in assessment held at the University of York in 1977 under the chairmanship of Robert Bunting, but, whereas the results in the York session were quite promising and pointed to the reliability of this method, the present experiment has exposed great flaws in a procedure that is advocated by at least one G.C.S.E. group as being suitable for the moderation of students' compositions.

Peer assessment in musical performance: the development, trial and evaluation of a methodology for the Australian tertiary environment

“…Many issues arise here and one of the first is the potential for different assessments by staff. Boud (1995: 99) argues that it is 'quite common for different tutors to give the same piece of work widely different assessments', a view also supported by Brew (1999), Falchikov (1986), Simmonds (1988) and Weaver & Cotrell (1986). At the same time, Brew (1999: 161) states that, provided that criteria are in place and are clear, student and staff marks 'tend to be similar'.…”

An Evaluation of the Use of Peer Assessment in Higher Education: a case study in the School of Music, Kingston University

“…Even this apparently ideal situation is not without its problems. As the study by Simmonds (1988) shows, even when a number of groups of experienced music teachers/lecturers assessed a small number of pupils' compositions, there were Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 17:30 04 April 2015 considerable difficulties in achieving a consensus between the different groups, as well as within each group.…”

Assessment of undergraduate students' music compositions

“…Few actually believe that the ratings can be standardized after the moderation meetings. Indeed, Simmonds's (1988) experiment in the assessment of composition found that there were great flaws in the reliability of group consensus. Using general probability theory, multifaceted Rasch models can estimate and calibrate rater severity and provide a probability-based adjustment to the raw ratings by raters.…”

“…Over the years, studies on assessing compositions in schools and responding to students' compositions have provided different perspectives in assessing compositions (e.g., Burnard, 2002;Feldhusen & Goh, 1995;Freed-Garrod, 1999a, 1999bGreen, 2000;Harris & Hawksley, 1989;Hickey, 2001Hickey, , 2002Mellor, 1999;Plucker & Runco, 1998;Reese, 2003;Salaman, 1988;Simmonds, 1988;Spruce, 2001Spruce, , 2002Stephen, 2003;Swanwick, 1998;Webster, 1987aWebster, , 1987bWebster, , 1987c1989;Webster & Hickey, 1996;Younker, 2003). In this study, an assessment framework (Table 1) is developed with reference to a number of studies on the assessment of compositions.…”