Validation

What

At each stage of the Award journey there are certain pieces of work that need to be submitted by the students and then passed to the Edinburgh Award Coordinator at the end of the process.

Engagement with and completion of Input and Output 1, of Input and Output 2, and of Input 3 are prerequisites for students completing Output 3.  Output 3 is therefore the final validation stage in the Edinburgh Award, i.e. identifying which students have fulfilled all the requirements and will receive the Edinburgh Award from the University.

Why

Submission of these allow students to access subsequent stages of the Award and are a good mechanism for Award leaders to track progress and engagement. They also provide evidence to us and the University that students are engaging appropriately with the Award journey.

How

Within one week of Input 2 and Input 3, Outputs 2 and 3 respectively must be submitted by students and checked to confirm they are genuine attempts at the reflections.  This check can be done either by peer assessment or by the Award leader. 

Assessment by peers

Where possible, we encourage the use of peer assessment because of the depth of learning that can come from reviewing other students’ reflections and also because this support the increased scale of the Award as this approach takes the pressure off Award leaders as they are not required to review all student reflections. There is guidance on using peer assessment here. 

Assessment by Award Leaders

If peer assessment is not used, then students submit their reflections after Input 2 and their reflections after Input 3 within one week of the Input and Award leaders decide whether or not they are a genuine attempt at the exercise. We say genuine attempt because this is not a piece of academic work and so does not need to be reviewed with the same rigour.

Furthermore, the final submission is not the only way to measure engagement with the Award process and so if a student has enagaged with the underlying activity and the process throughout, then the final reflection acts as a culmination of that learning rather than the only indicator of engagement. While it is important that students submit a final reflection and demonstrate their overall learning what is most important is that by the time they reach the final stage students should be equipped with the tools to be able to aim for excellence, and to be able to articulate their development, in any setting.

When

Where peer assessment isn’t being used the Award leader must pass to the EAC the final list of successful students by the Wednesday of week 10 in Semester 2 for an Award running October to March. For Awards running over a different timescale final lists will be sent over by a date agreed with the EAC.