My first workshop

Well, I've just finished my first workshop on "Assessment for learning: are our practices fit for purpose?" I made a lot of references to FAST and TALI, using Graham Gibbs' paper from Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Issue 1, 2004-05).

It was interesting working in such a different context with some very large classes, only a certain number of students being allowed to progress to the second year (norm referencing to the fore) and the exam very much the major assessment instrument. However, inevitably those who came to the workshop were prepared to try new things - as at SHU it's those who don't come who may be problematic and why we increasingly need to work at a Subject Group level if we want to bring about real, deep change to practices.

I again posed the three questions I've been using at SHU and elsewhere quite a lot recently:

1. Could you have a meeting about learning and teaching and not mention 'assessment', not because it wasn't being considered, but because the students were taking responsibility for demonstrating their learning - what, how well, what needed further work, etc. Too often 'assessment' is seen as something done to students by staff rather than a way of genuinely exploring student learning
2. Could you set an exam where students didn't have to do any revision in the traditional sense. Rather, they prepared by making sense of the materials they had been working with, gathered additional data/ideas and perhaps carried out a preliminary group activity
3. Have an exam where students spent half their time thinking, making sense, engaging in critical thinking, problem-solving, being creative and working with new material, etc. and only half their time (if that) writing anything. Use computers to test the factual knowledge and exams - to the extent that the system still requires them - to test higher order learning. And rather than Bloom I would prefer to use the SOLO taxonomy (see Biggs) - again, to the extent that we want to use any taxonomy at all.

I'm also working in a much less structured way in workshops to present more of a challenge to myself. So, with a clear title, a few handouts and finding out the interests and needs of the participants it was possible to move in a variety of ways to the identified general outcomes. I made the comparison with orienteering where I know I have to get to the next control but there are a variety of ways of getting there and route choice needs to balance with speed to be most effective.

I also don't use 'happy sheet' evaluations but two post-its - on one they write what was 'good' and on the other what they want 'more of'. One of the 'goods' was 'responsive style, no set agenda - great' much like the feedback I received from ACES when we used Open Space Technology on their LTA Co-ordinators Retreat.

This open, facilitative approach is more risky but has much more meaning for the participants as it addresses their needs rather than our agenda. However, there are still some who just want to be given 'the answer' or 'how to do it' - a bit like students really!