this work is published under a CC attribution - non commercial - share alike licence
The Post Industrial Media Project is a collaborative teaching and learning research project undertaken by Adrian Miles, Allan Thomas, David Carlin, Glen Donnar, Paul Ritchard, Rachel Wilson and Seth Keen of the RMIT Media program.
Contents |
Assessment is, of course, in some senses, a necessary evil. Students must be graded: sorted into those who excel, those who achieve adequate results and those who do not achieve enough to be said to have mastered even a basic grasp of the subject. The University (and its worldwide peers) need to be able to see which students have shown themselves capable to go on to higher studies. Prospective employers may want to have an indication of particular skills and knowledge.
However, we approach assessment as an integral tool within our pedagogy.
We believe assessment should:
Assessment tasks are designed with a particular view to their formative (ref) value. In other words our aim is that each task facilitates the students' engagement with one or more of the key competencies of critical practice that we are trying to develop.
Assessment can be instrumental in facilitating student growth, motivation and progress, in offering a sense of accomplishment and a guide to how well they have met subject/their own goals. As a university of applied learning we grade to assessment criteria and we don't apply the traditional bell curve to grade distribution.
There is a blog post about self assessment in Adrian Miles' blog, it was written as pointers for workshop that he and Seth Keen ran in the School of Applied Communication around assessment.
Self assessment is always conducted in a shared context, made public in either in the classroom environment or through their blogs. We find this encourages accountability and helps foster responsibility for their own learning. Students are expected to provide detailed evidence justifying their claims, before a process of negotiation with their peers/and or teacher. This evidence is produced throughout a course, primarily through their individual blogs. We have described a self assessment protocol which has been used with first year students as an introductory outline of our practice.
Students usually self assess a combination of active participation, self directed learning, collaboration and/or process skills. They do so through:
Self assessment isn't always successful. In our experience where it is problematic is disjunction between what they are being asked to assess and the importance
random thoughts to make sense of later
Traditional models of assessment have tended to concentrate on the assessment of some object (or event) that is the culmination of a learning activity. For example it might be an exam, the submission of an essay, a tute paper, or the submission or presentation of a project. These forms of assessment, which the literature likes to call 'summative' (as opposed to 'formative'), pays attention to what learning is evidenced in the finished thing.
This can be dodgy. After all it is easy to see how 'smart' a student is in reading their essay but it is pretty hard to tell how much learning has actually happenend via that same essay (or any other completed object). This is easy to understand, since the finished work in itself usually provides no mechanisms to evaluate what the student has actually done in making the work (eg how much research, how much time, how much drafting and re-writing, and so on) and so we tend to assess and evaluate these things either against external benchmarks and/or relative to the other submitted work.
Another issue with these forms of assessment is that from the student's point of view they are the end of something. This is unfortunate for we as teachers would like to think that an essay is actually the beginning of something, rather than the end. This is, of course, why most students do not collect their submitted work after it has been assessed - the comments can make no difference to the grade, and it has usually been experienced as something closer to a compliance task than a journey into new knowledge. As a teacher this is frustrating, particularly if you put in a lot of time into providing feedback only to find most students don't seem that interested in receiving it!
In our approach to media education we have explicitly declared an intention to assess process over outcome. This does not mean that outcomes are unimportant, or that there are not activities (which may or may not be assessed) where the outcome is of primary concern. However, within this process orientated model we tend to encourage the production of sketches, prototypes, and the adoption of iterative work models. This lets us concentrate on how things are being done, and on assessing these, rather than the finished objects - though of course it is quite essay to have a combination where the stages of something may be assesses as well as the completed work.
Even in traditional subjects, where for example essays may be the primary assessment form, this is feasible. For instance rather than setting two essays during a subject you may set only one. However the students are required to submit a major draft (this is the first assessment task) and this receives extensive feedback and comments. (Remember, this can be used for any other sort of outcome.) This might contribute 50% or more to the final mark (in some people's practice it might contribute as much as 70% to indicate to the students that this is the really important part of the process), and so must be done well by the student to do well in the essay. In some subjects detailed feedback is provided at this draft stage, and when the final work is submitted assess the completed work but provide now feedback - unless students specifically request it. The advantages of this are that the feedback happens at a point where it influences the student and the work, and so is able to make a material difference to the final outcome (unlike comments after the work is completed). It also means that when the final work is submitted the assessment workload is lessened, without any reduction in educational benefits, since students have received qualitative feedback already and have the opportunity to receive more if they desire.
In these cases very explicit assessment matrices are used, and these are available to students before they submit their work. These matrices indicate what is being assessed and so what counts as important in the work, and in the case where a draft may receive feedback it is common to use a second matrix for the final assessment which includes some acknowledgment of how the student has responded to the feedback. This can even be weighted in the matrix to indicate to the students that this is a significant part of the assessment.
As blogs are in integral part of our practice and curriculum they become a ready-made portfolio system for students. This lets us use a variety of alternative assessment methods very easily, as the blogs represent a documentary trail of their activities through subjects and so can be used by students to provide evidence of ideas, activities, problems and achievements.
For example, where students may have had to produce drafts of work for assessment we can invite (or require) them to write a blog post to accompany the final submission. This blog post would be required to discuss the finished work, how it is has changed, what or how the earlier assessment has influenced or produced any changes (why? why not? how?) and how the final work is different to the draft work. The evidence for this is simply included as links to earlier blog posts by the student. (An example is available here.)
Similarly drafts can be published or distributed via blogs, which lets other students see work, comment on it, and link to it. More importantly even if they don't comment on each other's drafts simply seeing other work in these ways helps students to contextualise their own practice and to see that there are meaningful differences between the sorts of work (style, quality, scale) being undertaken. These drafts, and of course posts that just discuss ideas, problems, misgivings and insights, can all be linked to within contextualising posts and these can be used for assessment.
In some subjects we may have students producing a lot of work. For example a piece a week (they might be 60 second video or audio projects, responses to readings, or just writing tasks) might be made. However rather than assess all of these (which is onerous for everyone, but also makes each one trivial in its relation to a final result) work may be reqularly critiqued (for example using de Bono's [Coloured_Hat_Critique|coloured hats]) and then students can submit a portfolio of work. In [EditingMediaTexts|Editing Media Texts] for example every week there is something made. All work is reviewed using the coloured hats, and then at the end of the semester students prepare a portfolio where they select three works (each must be from a particular part of the semester) for assessment. These works are able to be remade in light of the critique that they have received in class. Again, this lets feedback inform assessment and learning, rather than something which comes after the work is completed.
Kauchak, D and Eggen, P (2007), Learning and Teaching; Research-Based Methods, Pearson Education: Boston, 5th edn p.356 (and project-based learning)
Norton, P & Wiburg, K (2003), Teaching with Technology: Designing Opportunities to Learn, Wadsworth: Belmont, 2nd edn, pp.248-250 (and constructivist principles, PBL)
Richardson, W (2006), Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: and other powerful web tools for classrooms, Corwin Press: Thousand Oaks, p.49 (and blogs)
Uden, L & Beaumont, C (2006), Technology and Problem-Based Learning, Information Science Publishing: Hershey, Ch. 8, p.231
Vrasidas, C and Glass, G (eds.) (2005), Preparing Teachers to Teach with Technology, Information Age Publishing: Greenwich, Connecticut, p.13 (and constructivism)
Woods, D (2000), Problem-Based Learning: How to gain the most from PBL, Donald R Woods: Waterdown, 2nd edn, 8:1-2
Downing, K, Cheung, H, Wong C & Shin, K (2007), “Thinking about Thinking Online”, in Tsang, P, Kwan, R & Fox, R (eds.), Enhancing learning through Technology, World Scientific: Singapore, pp.27-36 (and online education), p.32 (and blogs)
Falchikov, N (2001), “Reflections and Prospects”, in Falchikov, N (ed.), Learning Together: Peer Tutoring in Higher Education, Routledge-Falmer: London, pp.271-273 (in group work)
Gregory, J (2006), “Assessment of experiential learning in higher education”, in Jarvis, P (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Teaching, Routledge: London, 2nd edn, pp.205-223 (in experiential learning)
Richardson, W (2006), Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: and other powerful web tools for classrooms, Corwin Press: Thousand Oaks, p.49 (and blogs)
Woods, D (2000), Problem-Based Learning: How to gain the most from PBL, Donald R Woods: Waterdown, 2nd edn, Chapters 8 & 9
Falchikov, N (2001), “Reflections and Prospects”, in Falchikov, N (ed.), Learning Together: Peer Tutoring in Higher Education, Routledge-Falmer: London, pp.272-273 (in group work)
Gregory, J (2006), “Assessment of experiential learning in higher education”, in Jarvis, P (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Teaching, Routledge: London, 2nd edn, pp.205-223 (in experiential learning)
Woods, D (2000), Problem-Based Learning: How to gain the most from PBL, Donald R Woods: Waterdown, 2nd edn, 10:4 (feedback)