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Tag: EDPM06

PG Cert AP: Day 15

Published 6th April 2017

The final taught day on the PG Cert was for the assessment module, EDPM06, and was about how assessment reflects and can influence pedagogy. We were advised to set assessments which are inclusive of all rather than targeting perceived needs of particular groups, but be ready and flexible enough to meet any specific needs which may emerge. This led to a discussion about equality, especially of access to HE, and social justice. Burke’s book, The Right to Higher Education, was recommended for follow up reading in this area.

Finally, there was some discussion and clarification on the assessments for this module itself. These are to write a reflective report showing how your practice has been influenced by what has been taught on this module, and to write two critiques of assessments which you have set or been given, again based on what you have been taught here.

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PG Cert AP: Day 12

Published 16th March 2017

Second day of the Assessment and Feedback for Learning module began with a discussion on the purpose of assessment which is at least partly about gatekeeping and assessing fitness to practice, especially in subjects such as medicine. Expanding out from there we discussed how assessment reflects the needs and demands of wider society and how this has been changing in response to the marketisation of higher education.

There was an interesting side discussion at one point about implicit assessment and how this can distract students. One person talked about how this had manifested on their module, with students believing that there was a hidden quota on the number of students who were supposed to pass and fail. Rather than concentrating on the assessment task at hand they spend a great deal of time in discussions amongst themselves trying to work out this non-existent pass-fail ratio.

In the afternoon we discussed the differences between formative and summative assessment, and how to use assessment to achieve effective learning and learner gain. That, we concluded, comes best from formative assessments, but these take a lot of time and effort and exist in tension with students preference for summative assessment and preoccupation with grades, a possible result of the changing culture which marketisation has brought about.

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PG Cert AP: Day 8

Published 9th February 2017

First day of my optional module, Assessment and Feedback for Learning, began with a discussion of how assessment can be used for learning, rather than as a tool to measure learning. The module has this concept at its core and, as such, the main assessment of this module is to critically analyse two assessments that you have used or written previously. There is also a second assessment, to write a personal reflective report on how you have found the problem based learning approach taken in this module, and how what you have learned impacts on your own academic practice. Very meta.

After setting out the learning objectives and the assessments of the modules, the remainder of the day was spent discussing the various factors and contexts which influence how assessments are set and marked. These included how student expectations have changed as a result of the marketisation of the sector, the university’s generic assessment criteria and how that relates to the learning outcomes on individual modules, and the cascading down of risk onto lecturers, e.g. pressures around graduate employability and how that influences the assessments which are set.

We also discussed the difference between formative and summative assessment, and how and why students often see formative assessments as options. There was a little about Foucault’s ‘regimes of truth’ (got to love a bit of Foucault!), and the concepts of the hidden curriculum and expectations – that everyone has a certain baseline IT literacy for example.

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