Thursday 2 April 2009

Putting assessment at the Heart of Learning : HEA Assessment and Feedback Event

Norah Jones and Alice Lau (Glamorgan)presented a really piece on their work about engaging faculties and putting assessment at the heart of learning

Some notes I scribbled down as I was listening …

Different approaches are possible Plan vs Experiment
Experimenting allows people to make mistakes. The mistakes give potential to improve. See mistakes as a positive potential.

Students’ viewed were considered really important too – it seems as though they have done some great work here. Not only do they do the more tradional stuff (focus groups and surveys etc) but they used Facebook too to elicit students views – Interesting the Facebook group was initiated by the SU – They seemed to have lots of engagement and collected data that did not come through form their other methods.

They spoke about them collecting and sharing good practice too. And this was collected from the Institution – which, for me, helps contextualise the setting. i.e. stops at source, this cant be done here retort.

They spoke too of the creation of assessment diaries – these show bunching of assessments etc. The team suggested this initiative, the study diaries, had improved their NSS results. I wondered if it might be some secondary effects too – i.e. the engagement with th students in creating the diaries and seeing th challenges that the students face – Trojan horse rearing its head again!

Norah mentioned that assessment is a process not just a method and that to help them on their way the Change Academy activity was really helpful for. There is lots of information captured on web site which we will look at.
They have a journal too – will look to see if there is an opportunity to get ESCAPE published through this journal.

Really great presentation and a great job at Glamorgan – thumbs up!

7 comments:

Alice said...

Thanks Mark. Glad you enjoyed our presentation. :-)
We really enjoyed your presentation too and on our way back on the train; Norah and I discuss your idea of capturing the secondary and tertiary effects by tracking the staff involved. We would like to try that here in Glamorgan too.
We also really like your technology-to-assessment-principles grid. We would love to find out more!

MarkRussell said...

Hi Alice,

The day was rather frantic wasn't it? Or rather I found the day rather frantic. I suspect that was due to a day drip to York with little chance to stop and think/.

I really enjoyed all the sessions and hope we can keep in touch. In fact as I said on the day we would love to keep in touch. Be just great to fix something up.

Mark

Alice said...

Would you like to come and visit and maybe give a seminar on what ESCAPE is doing?

If so, I will have a chat with Norah when she is back next week and email you a few possible dates? How does that sound?

MarkRussell said...

Hi Alice - yep I would be dellighted to come over and share some of ourt work and also hear a bit more about your project too!

Yes please! I'm flattered!

Mark

Alice said...

Brilliant, Mark.

Norah and I are meeting with the rest of the Change Academy team this week, we will try and arrange potential dates and get back to you.

Thanks,
Alice

Alice said...

Hi Mark, Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

We have been looking at our events programme and given the time of the year, we guess the best time for a visit + seminar (if you don't mind!) would be in the new academic year.

Alternatively, we are happy for you to visit us anytime, but of course we would much perfer that you are given the opportunity to share what you and your team are working on in Herts as part of our monthly learning and teaching seminar.

What do you think?

Alice

MarkRussell said...

Hi Alice,

Sounds just fine to me - happy to run a session and share ideas.

Might be easier to email m if you want to hook up with some dates. How does that sound?

Be just great if we were able to catch up

Mark