Although this course is now finished and I have moved on to the next module, Landscape, I still need to analyse the comments that have come from the assessors. Tutor Clive White has written in response to a forum started by another tutor that asks students about their response to marking …
“It normally needs to be emphasised, just post assessment, that a 2:1 equivalent is a strong result. It’s the nature of statistical distributions that most results will be distributed around the median, at the centre of the distribution, 2:2, looking at the results across a range of assessment sessions confirms this; with some variation in the spread and often something of a small skew toward the higher end.
Being at the beginning of the 2:1 band indicates that the student’s potential has been recognised but there’s still head room for them to grow in to and the mark is an encouragement to do that; firstly by analysing the assessor feedback very carefully, re-reading it several times over some days to see how many different ways it can be read.
It’s amazing how often people understand from it, good or bad, what they’re expecting to understand from it. Some people have a very fixed paradigm for what they’re engaged in here and always read through its prism rather than adjusting their ideas in the light of their feedback, both from tutors and assessors.
Sometimes I see students repeating to other students what I’ve written to them and it can be not what I meant at all or completely contrary to what I advised.
You should be pleased with your 2:1. If you carry on being open, committed and engaged then the results will improve, although one doesn’t really need to do better than a 2:1 because that would meet a usual requirement to do an MA.
I don’t think any one should expect to get a first, nice it it happens, but as you say working commercially it’s the portfolio that counts. I have never had a single client ask me if I had a qualification and when I was an assistant most of the photographers I worked for didn’t have an academic qualification. They either learned photography doing National Service or became photographic assistants when they left school at 15 just by chance.”
… and further …
“In general I would say students should study the assessment criteria and compare them to their own practice.
Perhaps the most important idea that they embody is that of a creativity; evidenced by development of ‘voice’ and risk taking. These are the properties in a submission that attract additional marks over and above doing what one has been asked to do.
Is the mind set one of meeting the brief as if the OCA were clients or is it one of making the brief one’s own through creative interpretation so that it’s personally developmental, resulting in an outcome that perhaps one hadn’t initially expected and which challenges an assessor’s expectations.
The other important aspect that students should concentrate on is contexualisation of their work through wide researches and review; often specifically relating it to their own work as makers.
Imaginative creative responses, both visual and written, get results.”
About Amano - Photographic Studies
a student and practitioner of photography; meditator and neo-sannyasin; author and working photographer.
Progressing With Digital Photography 
Being at the beginning of the 2:1 band indicates that the student’s potential has been recognised but there’s still head room for them to grow in to and the mark is an encouragement to do that; firstly by analysing the assessor feedback very carefully, re-reading it several times over some days to see how many different ways it can be read.
It’s amazing how often people understand from it, good or bad, what they’re expecting to understand from it. Some people have a very fixed paradigm for what they’re engaged in here and always read through its prism rather than adjusting their ideas in the light of their feedback, both from tutors and assessors.
Sometimes I see students repeating to other students what I’ve written to them and it can be not what I meant at all or completely contrary to what I advised.
You should be pleased with your 2:1. If you carry on being open, committed and engaged then the results will improve, although one doesn’t really need to do better than a 2:1 because that would meet a usual requirement to do an MA.
I don’t think any one should expect to get a first, nice it it happens, but as you say working commercially it’s the portfolio that counts. I have never had a single client ask me if I had a qualification and when I was an assistant most of the photographers I worked for didn’t have an academic qualification. They either learned photography doing National Service or became photographic assistants when they left school at 15 just by chance.”
… and further …
“In general I would say students should study the assessment criteria and compare them to their own practice.
Perhaps the most important idea that they embody is that of a creativity; evidenced by development of ‘voice’ and risk taking. These are the properties in a submission that attract additional marks over and above doing what one has been asked to do.
Is the mind set one of meeting the brief as if the OCA were clients or is it one of making the brief one’s own through creative interpretation so that it’s personally developmental, resulting in an outcome that perhaps one hadn’t initially expected and which challenges an assessor’s expectations.
The other important aspect that students should concentrate on is contexualisation of their work through wide researches and review; often specifically relating it to their own work as makers.
Imaginative creative responses, both visual and written, get results.”