Per ardua ad alta

We are welcoming Lisa Gray of the JISC e-Learning Programme team, Marianne Sheppard from the Support and Synthesis team, and Sheila MacNeill, a representative from JISC CETIS to the university tomorrow . They are coming to meet the ESCAPE team and to have a round table meeting with us and our key stakeholders in the schools. It prom ices be a really useful day - we are keen to show JISC what we have achieved to date and to get feedback on our draft project plan. It will also be a chance to talk about the arrangements for the management of the project - both strategic with the steering group and advisory group and from an operational perspective. We will also be talking about the communication strategy and reporting mechanisms along with the Project evaluation plan and baseline data gathering exercises that we are nearly ready to start. I will be interested to see what support the meeting feels the project needs.
We are on the launch pad, we have done the preparation with our partner schools and we are ready (almost) to light the blue touch paper and launch the baseline assessment of the current assessment practice.

Winter's discontent made glorious

I have now been working on the ESCAPE project full time for nearly two weeks. And what a two weeks! Hertfordshire has seen the worst snow in many years with the result that the univesrsity effectively closed for three days last week. In spite of this we have managed to have extremely fruitful meetings with senior colleagues and stakeholders in the School of Life Sciences and the Business School. In the School of Life Sciences We have had meetings with Peter Stanbury, Associate Head of Department and Areles Molleman one of the LTI teachers who has a unique cross school perspective - they are both extremely supportive of the project and we are really looking forward to working with them. There are some changes to the mix of modules we are going to be looking at with one module being swapped as it is not running again for a similar one that has exhibited that has some novel and interesting assessment practices. Excitingly such is the enthusiasm for the project within the school - we have been approached to see if we can also include fifth module in from a master degree programme run by a keen supporter of the project, who has been involved in some novel work on assessment. This is I hope an indication of the building momentum that the project is generating.The ground work has been laid for the next stage of the project which is engaging with the module leaders in the school to look at a baseline audit of the assessment practice in their modules.

We have also been busy with colleges from the Business School - we have had meetings with Professor Mick Broadbent Head of Department, Karen Robins Associate Head of Department and Jan Filosof the programme manager of the programme we are looking at. We are in the process of narrowing down the choice of modules that we will be looking at through speaking to the module leaders, looking at the historical statistical data, AMERs and programmereview documentation etc.. We want suitable modules which would lend any developments to portability and sustainability within the school. There are a number of possibilities at the moment.

We submitted our draft project plan to JISC on Monday, with a deadline of the end of the month for the final version. The work package timelines have changed from the original bid document in that we have moved the time that we engage with the Business School forward so that we are working with the schools in tandem. This will mean that synergies can be encouraged and developed between the module teams and managers in the two schools schools. In addition the workpackages have been deconstructed slightly to enable more transparency in the plan.

15 (shh 45 !) minutes with the School of Life Sciences

We , (the ESCAPE team), managed to get an invite to talk more widely with one of our Partner Schools - The School of Life Sciences. We were invited to give a project background to the School’s Academic Quality and Enhancement Committee. Clearly we are not working with the entire School nor all their modules and so it was a good chance to alert others as to what we are doing and what we are trying to achieve.

My 15 minute slot ran into 45 minutes. Not convinced it was all my fault – I took many questions and the meeting ‘seemed’ happy for the discussion to spill over. Many questions were upbeat and some, perhaps rightly, felt a little more challenging. Why should they engage with us? What were we bringing to the table to a team that is already looking at its assessment diet? (and hopefully alignment with the Module Learning Outcomes) Why also the focus on the National Student Survey?

All good questions and naturally we need to provide a convincing argument about why we are doing what we are doing. Academics are very busy right now and want to know why they might need to revisit their curricula. If it aint broke …

I took a really positive email the following day from someone at the meeting. They wanted to offer their support for the project and the ways in the project was aligned with their interests some of what they had been trying to achieve. I was really grateful for the mail and for them letting me know that the project had rekindled an interest in this important area :-)

The meeting was a useful outlet to get ESCAPE out there but also a timely reminder that we need to marshal our evidence as we seek to engage and suggest a need for change.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

I am really starting to get a feel for what the ESCAPE project can achieve now that I have had a chance to meet people in other schools and to get their input on what the project will mean for them. I meet last week with Peter Stanbury - a senior member of the School of Life Sciences in a similar way that Mark & I met with representatives of the Business School. In each case they could see a real need for the project and anticipated its benefits. In each case we were welcomed with offers of all the help and access that we would need to help make the project a success. In many cases they were able to show how it dovetailed with work that had already being going on in their schools to address issues that they were aware of. It will be interesting to see how we can help and influence each other.

At the moment I am involved in writing up part of the project plan. Working on the workpackages aspect of the plan made me think of how in practice we will work with the stakeholders in the schools. Whatever model of working we adopt I am confident - having met with the schools -that we will get all the support, encouragement and cooperation we need. This is one of the key foundations for successthat the project needs - we are building on these initial meetings with a further series of meetings - snow permitting- this week.

Appreciating what works ...

As we develop and map out our evaluation plans at the forefront of our thinking is a desire to ...

* evaluate 'as we go' and learn lessons quickly
* ensure the evaluation activity does not upset or interfere with our collaborative endeavors with our partner schools
* seek out what already works
* get as much stakeholder input into the evaluation activity as possible.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) seems to offer an evaluation framework that meets many of the characteristics we are looking for. We will frame our questions in the spirit of AI and go looking for what works and how we can use more of it.

Visioning a brighter future and not taking a deficit approach is something we are looking forward to engage with.

Will keep you informed of the progress and, because the approach to the ESCAPE team, will reflect back things that challenge and excite us

Online marking

Having read Mark's post about meeting with the Business School, I wanted to comment on the benefits of online marking. I am a strong advocate of online submission. As well as reducing queueing times for students and as Mark rightly mentioned, burdens in marking work submitted in plastic wallets etc. the reduction in administrative time is really beneficial and it means as a lecturer, I can start marking assignments as soon as they come in. I do not have to wait for the paper copy to be logged, sorted and passed on to me. It also saves me time, as I don't have to physically pass the copy onto the second marker/moderator and back to the administrator. I think we save atleast 3 days by having work submitted online, plus it reduces the risk of paper copies getting lost and limits the need for storage space. I appreciate that some colleagues do not like reading work on the screen, but I know colleagues who print out the work to read it, but annotate the online version. I use my Tablet PC to mark which enables me to handwrite comments on the screen in exactly the same way i would do if i was annotating a paper script, however, those without a Tablet PC can easily use 'track changes' to annotate scripts. The other benefit to online marking, is that the students are more likley to read the feedback, and hopefully use the feedback. Student marks are released through the virtual learning environment (VLE)and the mark is shown at the bottom of the page below the feedback comments. If you haven't yet tried it, give online marking a go.

A challenge from the Vice Chancellor

Our Vice Chancellor (Professor Tim Wilson) lives in a different world from me. He seems to have firmly gone metric and now has 25 hours in a day and 10 days a week! Part of his busy schedule includes him keeping a blog where regular entries communicate thoughts, successes and challenges.

He had clearly read the Times Higher Education article on assessment, which was pleasing giving its relation to this project and UH's inclusion, and made many positive comments about the piece. At the end of his blog entry he asks the question about the format of the traditional examination. Why shouldn’t we allow computers and technology into the examination room? A great question and, for sure, there might be an appropriate reason why we don’t but for some cases I suspect there might not.

I might stretch the challenge further and not only ask why not make greater use of technology in the examination room but why the examination room itself?

What I really want from the ESCAPE project is to stimulate similar questioning with our partner academic schools and by the use of the project, appropriate change management techniques and visioning a future, explore why we do what we do.

Because we do, as a response would be interesting to unpack and see what lies behind keeping the norm.

Great to see that our VC is up for a challenge and wants us to explore current practice.