ATNConference08

Conference Dinner Fish alive and well

2008-12-11T16:24:00.004+10:30

We have a little something to remind us of the very successful ATN Assessment Conference here at the LTU at UniSA – two of the conference dinner table setting goldfish!

Many delegates were concerned at the fate of the fish, which formed a unique – if not controversial! – centrepiece at the National Wine Centre, where the conference dinner was held on Thursday 20^th November. The goldfish were the brainchild of conference organiser Julea Crea, and certainly got many delegates talking over dinner. Though she joked on the night her cat would be well fed, all of the goldfish are alive and well, going to various homes with two of them here at the Learning & Teaching Unit.

The two LTU fish are about to retire to the large pond of LTU Deputy Director and songsmith Gavin Sanderson.

Songs of the conference continued...

2008-12-10T07:06:00.003+10:30

Thanks to Alice, one of our student helpers, we also have a recording of the actual conference song as performed by a selection of delegates at the closing session.
Hats off to Gavin for this composition!

Conference Presentations

2008-11-25T20:07:00.010+10:30

Did you miss a presentation that you really wanted to see at the ATN Assessment conference?

Where possible we have uploaded the presentations for delegates to access in slideshare as a 'Presentation Pack".

| Get your Presentation Pack

If you change your mind about sharing your presentation, or you would like to add your presentation to this collection, please send an email to Diana Quinn at Diana.Quinn@unisa.edu.au

You can also download the actual powerpoint slides for Sally Brown's or John Biggs and Catherine Tang's keynotes from the UniSA web site.

Enjoy
Diana

Day 2 - Songs from the conference

2008-11-22T19:13:00.005+10:30

Re-live these priceless moments of the performance of the Songs of Assessment from the closing of the conference - thanks to Gavin for this hilarious contribution.

Sharing Constructive alignment

2008-11-22T09:12:00.006+10:30

John Biggs and Catherine Tang have allowed us to share their presentation online.

They argue that to engage students in assessment the assessment piece needs to be constructively aligned to the intended learning outcomes.

Constructive Alignment is a design for facilitating student learning, which has become the framework for teaching and quality assurance in several countries. The ‘constructive’ aspect refers to the idea that students construct meaning through relevant learning activities; ‘alignment’ refers to a learning environment where teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks, are linked or aligned to the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) of a subject or programme. The key is that the ILOs state a learning activity, such as ‘explain’ or ‘apply’, which students are required to perform during learning and in assessment. In this session, we adopt a hands-on approach to defining outcomes and designing aligned teaching and assessment tasks. It is recommended that those attending come to the session with a specific subject they are teaching in mind.

John Biggs And Catherine Tang 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Many thanks!

Feedback for Sally

2008-11-22T04:54:00.009+10:30

A person who really missed out in this conference was Sally Brown.

Sally and her team at Leeds Met worked very hard that last week to deliver her keynote virtually and prepare a recorded back-up (which delegates were delighted to download a copy of on their usbs before they went home) - and all from a cold and grey Leeds and because of the time difference and time frame, often in the middle of the night.

But Sally wouldn't have gotten any feedback - the polycom cut out when the applause peaked in the auditorium and there was no opportuninty for informal feedback or sharing local examples by chatting in the breaks or at the Gala dinner.

Well here is your chance - post a comment to this blog and ask that question, clarify that confusion and share your experience with Sally about her ideas and presentation.

To refresh you, Sally's keynote argued that to engage students in assessment (our theme) you needed to have fit for purpose assessment, as she wrote in her abstract:

Effective assessment significantly and positively impacts on student learning, as I suggested in my Big Ideas posting on the conference blog. Assessment shapes student behaviour and the signals we give students through the assignments we set them can influence the extent to which they spend their time on task productively. A fit-forpurpose approach enables us to foster productive behaviours and establish good learning patterns, enabling our students not only to succeed at university, but also to become effective lifelong learners. This keynote will explore how we can achieve this as individuals, course teams and institutions.

You can view her slides below and download them through slideshare.

Sally Brown 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to make a comment for Sally.

Day 1

2008-11-20T16:47:00.010+10:30

This morning all the technology stars were in perfect alignment and we had the magic of seeing, hearing and interacting with a very much larger than life version of Sally Brown. Full points for Sally for sharing her passion and committment to this conference and assessment in general in by staying up until midnight UK time to be with us this morning.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___

A big thanks to our students (pictured: Wal, Leonie and Alice) for their seemless management of all other things technological!

Diana and Andrea

Information for delegates

2008-11-13T13:11:00.008+10:30

Our delegates flying into Adelaide for the first time will find that the airport terminal is located about 15 minutes from the CBD, with airport shuttle buses operating regularly.

All delegates are invited to join us for some drinks and snacks at our Welcome Reception on Wednesday 19 th November from 5.00 to 7.00 pm. It will be held in the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery, located on the 3rd floor of the Hawke Building, City West Campus, UniSA, North Terrace. While you are there, take the opportunity to confirm your details at the Registration desk. The Registration desk will be staffed throughout the conference from 8 am.

A nearby student computer pool (GK 3-21) with 20 computers has also been booked and a guest log on will be available for delegates on the day prior to as well as the two days of the conference. See also the Staying Connected post.

The current program is now available on the web site. Do have a look as there are a range of interesting presentations, excellent keynote speakers, workshops and a poster session. We are very fortunate to have a close association with the Australian Learning and Teaching Council who are supporting assessment grant holders to participate in the conference.

The Conference proceedings will be available on a USB memory stick as a part of your registration materials (ISBN 978-0-646-50442-1). In the week following the conference the papers will be available online via the website. A hard copy of the Program and book of abstracts will also be part of your registration materials. The Copyright of the papers remains with the authors who have granted permission to the ATN assessment conference to publish their papers on the Web and in print. Authors are welcome to self-archive their papers.

Presenters please note the arrangements provided in an earlier post. There will be cable access to the Internet in the rooms using a special conference log on. Please note that if you wish to give handouts to attendees at your presentation, you will need to ensure that you bring sufficient copies with you.

The Gala Dinner for the conference to be held in the National Wine Centre at the eastern end of North Terrace on November 19 from 7 p.m. There will be entertainment and a dance floor(!). The dress code is ‘smart attire’.

The close of the conference will be held in the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery - with a few drinks and the first performance of our conference song. If you would like to be a part of the song creation or performance, Gavin Sanderson is your contact.

Sally's gone virtual

2008-11-13T08:02:00.009+10:30

We had the news yesterday that, due to unforeseen and extenuating circumstances, Sally Brown will be unable to travel to Australia for the ATN Assessment conference.

Yes we were disappointed too.

However, with the assistance of technology and support from David Boud, we will attempt to beam in a virtual form of Sally for her keynote presentation on Thursday morning. This is likely to be a live cross to the UK so there will be opportunities for delegates to engage with Sally about her current thinking about engaging students with assessment.

Also, if you have skimmed the abstracts provided in the online version of your program (a hard copy will be provided when you arrive) you will see that on Friday morning our keynote presenters are John Biggs and Catherine Tang. John and Catherine have invited delegates to select a course to work on during their interactive session on constructive alignment. Don't miss this opportunity to optimise your courses with input from the experts themselves.

Diana

P.S. This also means that Phil Race's pre-conference workshop "Smarter Feedback" on Wednesday had to be cancelled.

Image: Microsoft Clip art

Conference Gala Dinner

2008-11-12T14:42:00.007+10:30

The National Wine Centre is the location of our Conference Gala Dinner. Adelaide is known not only for its churches, but also for its abundance of wines so where else would you expect to find a national centre of cullinary excellence?

The Wine Centre is nestled behind the Adelaide Botanic Garde n - well worth a stroll - through on the way to dinner.

The ATN Conference organising Committee has some wonderful treats in store, including a beautiful menu and entertainment by nationally renowned musicians Keep the change.

Andrea
On behalf of the ATN Assessment Conference Committee

Calling all Presenters

2008-11-10T14:59:00.010+10:30

Just over a week to go....

We are looking forward to the ATN Assessment conference and to your presentations in particular.

As far as the technical side, you will need to be aware of the following arrangements:

All the presentation machines in the presentation rooms will be PCs running Windows XP and Office 2007.
In each room it will be possible to connect a speaker's own laptop. You may prefer this option, especially if your presentation involves complex multimedia effects, such as attached video or either attached or embedded audio.
There is wireless and cable internet access using the conference's log on
There will be a way of connecting the sound output of the computer to the audio system in the room.
We will have a speakers preparation room to accommodate last minute changes to presentations.
We will have support assistance so that speakers can provide their presentations to an assistant in the speaker preparation room in the morning of each day, ready for transfer to the presentation machine (different machine) during the break prior to the session.

In your presentations please attend to all the basics of good use of PowerPoint such as ensuring the font size is large to enable readability, and avoid excessively busy slides, and ensure the contrast of foreground and background colour makes the slides readable to all people, including those with common vision impediments such as colour blindness.

Thank you

Tim Ferris
on behalf of the ATN Assessment Conference Organising Committee

Staying connected at the ATN Assessment conference

2008-11-03T14:23:00.009+10:30

With such an exciting program, there may not be much desire to keep in touch with home base, however, if the urge is great, here are a few ways that you can stay connected while visiting Adelaide and UniSA in November for the ATN Assessment conference.

The University of South Australia participates in the eduroam community so delegates who are also from participating institutions are welcome to bring their laptops to connect to the wireless network while on-campus.

Also, a nearby student computer pool (GK 3-21) with 20 computers, has been booked for delegates on the day prior to as well as the two days of the conference. For non-UniSA delegates a special log on will be provided when they arrive.

Non-Adelaide delegates may also have access to the internet at other times through their accommodation.

An exciting program awaits!

2008-11-02T05:57:00.015+10:30

Last week the committee had the fun task of scheduling the 60+ contributions to the ATN Assessment conference. This post describes what we did and shares our draft program.

Kate, Andrea, Scott and Margaret working on the program

First we prepared a large matrix of the available times and created pieces of paper that had the information about each contribution. We printed these on coloured paper representing the different streams.

On the day we started our meeting significantly earlier than usual (it is a busy time of year in the academic calendar) with Kate providing the much needed coffee. After reviewing the requests for preferences for presenting, each of the stream editors placed their papers in the matrix to form the 6 sessions. We then 'locked them in' using blue tac. After photographing we entered this into a document to create our draft program for the conference.

We were very pleased with how it came together - but we were lucky to be working with such quality contributions! It really will be an exciting smorgasbord of sessions for conference delegates to enjoy.

Diana

Come for ATNA, stay for the weekend!

2008-10-02T16:52:00.006+09:30

Adelaide and South Australia in November is delightfully warm and a welcoming time to visit. It is the busy conference season, so accommodation can be tight, but it contributes to a thoughtful, international atmosphere. Take advantage of the range of accommodation options UniSA has arranged for the conference, and be sure to mention ‘ATN Assessment Conference’ to access the special rates.

The conference coincides with Adelaide’s balmy late spring of long evenings with sunsets over the sea, which you can take in at the end of a twenty minute tram ride to Glenelg.

If it is fine food you are after, there is no need to leave the city mile to experience the breadth of South Australia’s regional produce, as the famous and indulgent Central Market can provide it all. Open late Friday nights, it is also a perfect breakfast spot on a Saturday, and is the heart of Adelaide’s premier restaurant precinct.

Feast, the Gay and Lesbian cultural festival will be in full swing for those in the mood to kick up the heels, and once the conference is over you just may be inclined to stick around for a sun drenched wine tour.

What more could one ask for to de-brief from the stimulating ATN Assessment Conference?

Thought I would also share this YouTube video by the AdelaideChannel

Dates looming!

2008-09-22T13:47:00.009+09:30

With the ATN conference but two months away (yes, readers, TWO months!!) it's timely to mention a few dates.

Early Bird Registration Closes - October 9
Poster Abstracts - October 12
Papers accepted for non-refereed papers, presentations - October 18

As we speak, the ATN Conference Committee is busily chasing up reviews.

To those readers who have reviewed - many thanks for your efforts in providing useful feedback to our authors.

To our hard-working authors - many thanks for submitting your papers for review. We are keenly aware of the hard work involved in producing a paper and (although we can't say too much at this stage), we have some EXCELLENT papers in the offing.

In the meantime, to whet your appetite, have a look at what South Australia has to offer. Adelaide is particularly beautiful in November - what better time to have a conference?

Andrea (on behalf of the ATN Conference organising committee)

Constructive alignment and assessment - Activity 2

2008-09-08T08:42:00.000+09:30

This is the second activity in the series prepared by Catherine Tang where we can have a go at designing assessment tasks.

Constructive Alignment and Assessment Tasks

Assessment practices have a strong effect on what and how students learn – the backwash effect on learning. A positive backwash encourage appropriate learning approach to achieve the intended learning outcomes, while a negative backwash sends the wrong signals to students so that they use strategies irrelevant to achieving the intended learning outcomes. Constructively aligned assessment tasks have a positive backwash effect as they require students to deploy the verbs specified in the intended learning outcomes. Students see the relevancy between assessment tasks and what they are supposed to learn and hence are more likely to be motivated to actively engage in appropriate learning approaches. Details of Constructive Alignment and designing constructively aligned assessment tasks can be found in Biggs & Tang, 2007.

Activity 2: Designing an assessment task or tasks for one of your course ILOs
(Adapted from Task 11.3, Biggs & Tang, 2007, p. 243)

Refer to an ILO you have written in Activity 1 and design one or possibly more assessment task(s) that will appropriately assess this ILO. To help you check the alignment between the task(s) and the ILO, identify what the students are required to do in order to complete the assessment task(s). The student activities required to complete the assessment tasks should be aligned to the ILO.

Course ILO: ..................................................................................................

Assessment task (Specify the nature of the task)	Student activities to complete the task
1.
2.
3.

Now double check if the student activities are aligned to the verbs nominated in the selected course ILO.

After designing the task(s), you will need to write the grading criteria for each of the tasks (details see Biggs & Tang, 2007, Chapters 10, 11).

Please share with us any experience of designing and implementing constructively aligned assessment that you have.

Reference: Biggs, J. and Tang, C. (3rd ed) (2007) Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Open University Press/McGraw-Hill Education, Maidenhead, UK.

Constructive alignment and assessment - Activity 1

2008-09-05T07:57:00.001+09:30

Our next two posts will provide you with two activities in constructive alignment and assessment that have been prepared for you by Catherine Tang, co-keynote with John Biggs. If you haven't heard about constructive alignment then the following video "Teaching teaching & understanding understanding" is a good investment of 19 minutes. Many thanks for this, Catherine!

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

At the course (unit/subject) level, intended learning outcomes are statements clarifying what students should be able to perform after engaging in a teaching and learning experience. Each intended learning outcome statement should clearly specify the content or topic to be learned and the level of understanding (performance), expressed in the form of an action verb, desirable for students to achieve. (Refer to Biggs & Tang, 2007, Chapter 5 for details of Intended Learning Outcomes)

Activity 1: Writing course (unit/subject) intended learning outcomes (ILOs)
(Adapted from Task 5.2, Biggs & Tang, 2007, p.84)

Take a course (unit/subject) that you are teaching. Consider the course aim and write the course ILOs by identifying the

content or topic to be learned; and
level of understanding or performance to be achieved.

The following may provide a helpful framework.

Content or topic	Level of understanding or performance (outcome verb)

Now go across the rows and write out the course ILOs by stating the intended level of understanding or performance (outcome verb) and the content or topic in which the verb is to be enacted.

Constructive Alignment

Teaching and learning should focus on the intended learning outcomes. In Constructive Alignment (CA), the teaching and learning activities (TLAs) and assessment tasks (ATs) are designed to align to the intended learning outcomes of the particular learning experience. There are four stages in a constructively aligned curriculum (Biggs & Tang, 2007, pp. 54-55).

Describe the intended learning outcomes in the form of a verb (learning activity), its object (the content), and specify the context and a standard the students are to attain.
Create a learning environment using teaching/learning activities that address that verb and therefore are likely to bring about the intended outcomes.
Use assessment tasks that also contain that verb, thus enabling you to judge with the help of rubrics if and how well students’ performances meet the criteria.
Transform these judgments into standard grading criteria.

Smarter feedback references

2008-09-04T08:50:00.009+09:30

We were going to have a workshop before the conference from Phil Race - but due to unforeseen events, this has been cancelled.

Smarter feedback and feed-forward - giving more feedback, of better value, to more students in less time.Pre-conference workshop by Phil Race

The UK National Student Survey of 2005-8 shows that the areas where students are least satisfied with their experience of higher education are feedback and assessment, and this may well be the case in Australia too? In particular, students don’t reckon they get enough formative feedback, and it is not helping them as much as it should. What’s wrong with formative feedback? It can be too late. It can demotivate students instead of motivating them. It can take too much of our time, and yet students may take little notice of it. Too often, it can be feedback only, rather than also being feed-forward. This workshop aims to work out how we can give more and better feedback to more students – in less time!

You can find out more in:

Race, P and Pickford, R (2007) Making teaching Work London: Sage Publications.
Race, P (2006) The Lecturer’s Toolkit: 3rd edition London: Routledge.
Race P (2005) Making learning happen London: Sage Publications.

Pollyanna's post

2008-07-28T12:17:00.007+09:30

Hello to our (now 54 strong) ATN08 blog community

It's great to see things gradually hotting up with some great responses to Phil and Sally's 5 big ideas.

Well, I have to confess, I was one of the 3 optimists who (in our first poll) voted that 'love of learning' was a stronger motivator than 'marks' in assessment. I wonder why extrinsic motivation won out over intrinsic motivation with the masses (well, 12 voters)? Don't students come to Uni in the first place because they want to learn? Are we talking about a special few cases? Maybe that's just wishful thinking on our part.

What is engagement, if it isn't about tapping into the love or enjoyment of learning? Why have a conference about engaging students if the potential to love learning is unengagable? Or is it?

What do you think?

(So many questions for Pollyanna to ponder!)

A ndrea Duff

Learning Adviser
UniSA Mawson Lakes

Phil's Big idea 5

2008-07-23T07:42:00.006+09:30

Well the papers are rolling in - and out to reviewers - thanks everyone for following the guidelines so well. It should be about 3 weeks before some decisions are made.

In the mean time, for your academic pleasure, here is the final installment in Phil Race's 5 big ideas about feedback.
(BTW: Next post you can look forward to hearing from our keynote - Catherine Tang).

All the best,
Diana

Formative assessment and feedback is more important than end-of-module summative assessment

Perhaps there should be a rule that a maximum of 30% of credit can go to any ‘end-of-….’ assessment, and that 70% of the assessment should be ‘along the journey’ rather than ‘at the destination’. The least valuable ‘feedback’ is ‘just a mark or grade’ at the end of something – students rarely want to go back and find out exactly what they did really well or badly when something is ‘over’. And while we’re making such radical changes, perhaps any assessment format (e.g. time-constrained unseen exams, essays, reports, presentations, …) should not be allowed to exceed one-fifth of the overall assessment for a course, module, year, whatever, so that the mix of assessment and feedback can be suitably enriched.

For more of Phil’s recent writing on feedback and assessment, please see:
· www.phil-race.com
· Race, P and Pickford, R (2007) Making Teaching Work London: Sage.
· Race, P (2007) How to Get a Good Degree: 2nd edition Maidenhead: Open University Press (book for students).
· Race, P (2006) The Lecturer’s Toolkit: 3rd edition London: Routledge.
· Race, P (2005) Making Learning Happen London: Sage.
· Brown, S, Smith, B and Race, P (2005) 500 Tips on Assessment London: Routledge.
· Race, P (2003) How to Study Oxford: Blackwell (also now published in Chinese, Malaysian, Ukrainian, and Spanish) (book for students).

Phil's Big idea 4

2008-07-23T07:41:00.004+09:30

Students get more feedback from each other than they can ever get just from us.

This feedback may not be seen by them to be so ‘authoritative’ as feedback from us, but we can address this. Involving students in self-assessment of their own work, and peer-assessment of each others work can help us increase the quality, frequency and relevance of peer feedback. We can legitimise peer-feedback – e.g. by saying ‘don’t hand in your work until you’ve had feedback from at least three other fellow-students’, and by saying ‘when you get your marked work back, look at other students’ marked work and the feedback on their work; you can learn a lot about how to get better marks (and mistakes not to make) from other people’s marked work’.

Phil's Big idea 3

2008-07-23T07:40:00.004+09:30

Students need feedback after no more than ‘one sleep’!

Three weeks later doesn’t work. By then, students have lost interest in the work concerned, and have moved on to something else. They need feedback while they still remember what they were trying to do, while they still remember what they struggled with, and while they are still proud of what they mastered. They need feedback at the moment of submission – and this means they all have to hand in their work at the same time. The ideal place is at a lecture, when they’re all together anyway, and can receive whole-group feedback on likely mistakes, frequently-needed explanations, there and then. This can be achieved – see the extract '24-hour feedback’ from ‘Making Teaching Work’ by Phil Race and Ruth Pickford (Sage, 2007) in the compendium of feedback writings on the downloads page of www.phil-race.com.

Image source: Microsoft Clip Art

Big Idea 2

2008-07-23T07:39:00.007+09:30

This is the second of Phil Race's big ideas about feedback.

If you are getting this email through feedburner, click on the title of the blog post to link to the actual post in our blog.

Phil's Big Idea 2:

We can’t go on like this!

Marking students’ work and giving them feedback takes time. It can take all of our time and energy! Sometimes, we’re still trying to do the same thing for large classes with hundreds of students as we used to do twenty years ago for much smaller classes. We can’t do this! The quality, timeliness and relevance of feedback are being damaged. Feedback in higher education is broken! To make feedback and assessment fit for purpose in the 21st century, we have to be prepared to engage in radical change regarding what we are trying to achieve, and the processes we’re using to allow formative feedback to enhance student learning.

Remember Phil Race is joining us for the ATN conference and is offering a pre-conference workshop on Feedback in Adelaide on Wednesday November 19, 2008. Feel free to leave a comment for Phil and our group about your perspectives about radical change in assessment and feedback.

Phil's Big 5 - Feedback

2008-07-21T11:56:00.004+09:30

Phil Race (Visiting Professor: Assessment, Learning and Teaching, Leeds Metropolitan University) will be attending the ATN Assessment conference and presenting a pre-conference workshop on November 19, focusing on Feedback.

Phil has also prepared a 5 big ideas for delegates to consider and discuss or, in Phil's words, "to stir things up" in relation to feedback. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment.

Big Idea 1

Feed-forward is the lifeblood of successful learning.

We’ve probably always known this, but student evaluation shows that feedback to students is not working nearly as well as it needs to work. In particular, students need to be able to build on our feedback so that they can address it in their next element of work, and build on their strengths as well as address the deficiencies in their work. But they say they don’t get feedback fast enough, nor does it help them sort out well enough the things they don’t understand.

BIG IDEA 5

2008-06-19T14:45:00.004+09:30

The final big idea in the series from Sally Brown

Big idea 5

Helping students understand and use feedback can make a real difference to their progression and achievement

Frequent, formative feedback impacts positively on student learning and we need to re-engineer practices to make this possible;

The UK Open University inter alia is keen to promote feed-forward as well as feedback, prompting students to use advice from one assignment to inform their actions prior to the next one.

Students need convincing that assignments are not just ‘make work’ or punishing tasks. We need to win their hearts and minds to recognise that assessment is integral to their learning and it is a crucial part of it.

Welcome to our NUTN subscribers

2008-06-13T01:46:00.002+09:30

Hello to our ATN Assessment conference readers from Utah, where I have just attended what was a superb conference called 2020 Vision: A look at higher education through techno-coloured glasses, facilitated by The National University Telecommunications Network (NUTN).

I would like to warmly welcome our friends from the US who are signed up to the blog and encourage them to come along to the ATN conference in November and/or contribute to our discussion about engaging students in assessment.

WELCOME!

Andrea Duff

(on behalf of Dr Diana Quinn, conference convenor and the ATN 'Engaging students in Assessment' conference team)

BIG IDEA 4

2008-06-11T18:05:00.002+09:30

Number 4 in the series of 5 of Sally Brown's BIG IDEAS for engaging students in assessment. Please share your reaction by adding a comment.

BIG IDEA Number 4

Students learn better if they have sound and frequent assessment opportunities

Good assessment is valid, reliable, practical, developmental, manageable, cost-effective, fit for purpose, relevant, authentic, closely linked to learning outcomes and fair. Is it possible also to make it enjoyable for staff and students? Incremental assessment has more value in promoting student learning than end-point ‘sudden death’ approaches.

BIG IDEA number 3

2008-06-11T17:47:00.006+09:30

The third of Sally Brown's 5 BIG IDEAS in engaging students in assessment awaits. If this triggers any reaction for you then please add a comment!

Sally's BIG IDEA No. 3

Diverse and innovative assessment helps diverse students learn better

Traditional assessment methods tend to reinforce rather limited approaches to learning by students, by encouraging memorisation, unproductive rote learning and attitude to knowledge acquisition that are reminiscent of the language of eating disorders (stuffing in and regurgitation of facts). We therefore need to utilise a wide range of assessment methods and approaches.
Innovative assessment approaches can foster a spirit of enquiry, encourage curiosity and promote autonomy where they encourage students to become closely involved with evaluating their own and each others’ learning. (Falchikov, 2005; Pickford and Brown, 2006).

Number 2 of 5 BIG IDEAS about engaging students in assessment by Sally Brown

2008-06-11T17:09:00.001+09:30

Continuing our series of Sally Brown's 5 big ideas to engage students in assessment - here is the second installment. If this triggers any reaction for you then please add a comment!

Sally's BIG IDEA No. 2

We need to set good patterns of behaviour early

Students rarely respond positively to exhortation or vague threats of poor marks: we need to change the assessment practices so that they make routine these behaviours very early on in a student’s HE career. Yorke (1999) encourages us to believe that the first six weeks of the first semester of the first year are crucial and that how we assess within that period can make a difference to student success or failure. Avoidance of assessment in Semester One doesn't solve the problem.

Sally's five BIG ideas about engaging students in their assessment

2008-06-06T13:47:00.000+09:30

We are delighted to welcome Prof Sally Brown as ATN '08 keynote. Sally is Provost and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Assessment, Learning and Teaching, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

We asked for Sally's top five BIG IDEAS for engaging students in assessment which, dear readers, we will deliver to you over the coming weeks. Sally has very generously offered to 'find a prize' for the top three best ideas for engaging students so...post away by clicking on the link to comments below this posting.

ENGAGE...ASSESS...

BIG IDEA No1

Assessment really matters

Effective assessment significantly and positively impacts on student learning, (Boud, Mentkowski, Knight and Yorke and many others).

Assessment shapes student behaviour (they treat marks as money) and poor assessment encourages strategic behaviour (Kneale). Clever course developers utilise this tendency and design assessment tools that foster the behaviours we would wish to see (for example, logical sequencing, fluent writing, effective referencing and good time management).

References used in the preparation of Sally's 'Big Idea' posts

___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Your thoughts?

Meet your ATN Conference Team

2008-06-05T14:09:00.000+09:30

Just to reassure you there ARE real people behind the emails and blog postings you will recieve, here is our happy conference organising committee - led by Dr Diana Quinn. Our team is meeting once a fortnight - busily creating ATN '08.

Back left to right: Diana Quinn (Learning and Teaching Unit; Convenor); Narelle Walker (Learning and Teaching Unit; Fabulous Project Officer); Scott Copeland (School of Commerce).

Front left to right: Kate Andre (School of Nursing and Midwifery); Andrea Duff (Learning and Teaching Unit; Blogger) and Margaret Green (School of Physiotherapy).

Missing (for now): Tim Ferris (Systems Engineering and Evaluation Centre)

We look forward to seeing you in Adelaide in November.

2008-05-26T14:20:00.000+09:30

Shy and reclining - but always

engaging - Part 2

Andrea Duff speaks with ATN Conference Keynote, John Biggs in the second installment of John's view of engagement and teaching.

You’ve said ‘good teaching is good teaching’ no matter what the cultural circumstances of a student but have ideas of ‘good teaching’ changed over the decades?

I think what has changed over the decades is how teaching used to focus on ‘very excellent’ teachers via awards.

However, this doesn’t address the question of what the student is learning – good teaching is more about what the student does than what the teacher does.

Nowadays – while the idea of individual teaching awards exist – they are seen in the context of course design, assessment, faculty and what the students are actually learning. Any one individual can do well in any teaching context but it needs to be recognised from a holistic point-of-view rather than from the individual’s point-of-view. In China, for example, they do select individual teachers for awards but then award recipients have to share their knowledge with others. It is much more collectivist in orientation.

To what extent is student engagement now dependent on using the technological gizmos and whizz bang social technologies?

Technology can engage students in ways which are relevant. In some ways technology enables the learning to be done more easily and effectively (simulations are an example of this).

Students are often highly stressed because of life pressures and their time is precious. Technology enables them to engage with learning activities in ways to suit themselves. They love it.

BUT…technology is a means not an end. Some teachers think that once you’ve got them online that’s the end but that’s not the case at all.

Who engages you today and why?

I have two answers.

Firstly, I engage myself! I officially retired full time from Academe in 1995 to devote my ‘reclining’ years to writing fiction. This is the one the purest form of self-engagement. The writing, the creating and the editing are derived from within.

Secondly, Bob Brown engages me. He was originally pathologically shy and has had to overcome this to become an inspirational leader. I am inspired by his courage and the humanitarian principles he stands for.

Shy and reclining but always engaging - Part 1

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Andrea Duff speaks with ATN Conference Keynote, Professor John Biggs

John Biggs – author of things academic and fictional – is spoken of with a good deal of admiration at Learning and Teaching Unit at UniSA. Seminal works such as Student approaches to learning and studying (1987) have provided the scaffolding for professional and academic development here at UniSA.

John (along with co-author and partner Catherine Tang) has recently released the third edition of Teaching for Quality Learning at University – a work which examines constructive alignment in teaching.

Both John and Catherine will be present at the upcoming ATN Assessment conference as keynote speakers (more from Catherine later). I spoke to John at his home in Hobart earlier this week.

John – could you describe for our blog readers your view of ‘engagement’ and how an educator’s view might differ from a student’s view?

Engagement is getting the student to become actively involved in their learning in order to achieve the outcomes we would like to see in their learning.

In the past the teaching was left totally to the teacher. In other words, the teacher delivered the content and if the student didn’t get it, it was their fault. I call this the ‘blame the student’ model of teaching.

My work is ‘outcomes based’ but that is a dreadfully misused term. In the far left corner are postmodern educators who cast ‘outcomes based’ in a language which people just don’t understand. In the far right corner are those who use ‘outcomes based’ in a controlling, managerial, sense with reference to institutional objectives, for example benchmarking.

Constructive alignment is located in the classroom, and is concerned only with enhancing teaching and learning. Here the points of view of teacher and student are symbiotic. Students and teacher are all oriented towards the same outcomes. The student is engaged.

And what are the rules of engagement?

There are two aspects to these rules. Structural, which is to do with the design of the learning context. In constructive alignment, the verbs around what the student is required to do (for example, ‘reflect’, ‘apply’ or ‘analyse’) are stated in the intended outcomes, and then the teaching/learning context requires the students to enact those verbs. The assessment task needs to embody these verbs as well to see how well they may be enacted.

For example, I was teaching psychology to teachers and what I would do is get them do assignments and tasks which essentially told me how well they understood in the sense of being able to apply their knowledge, rather than in the sense of being walking encyclopedias on Piaget or Bruner. ‘Tell me what I just told you’ misses the point. It’s only to do with declarative knowledge. Enabling students to put the knowledge to work is the important thing.

The second aspect refers to what is essentially motivation. Students need to see that the tasks they are required to learn are valuable in a sense meaningful to them; and also that they can expect success in those tasks. If a student values the task, but sees little hope of succeeding in it, why proceed? Some teachers even emphasise the difficulty of tasks in an attempt to motivate students, but if they feel they have little chance of success it is more likely to de-motivate them. The best way of motivating students is by nurturing a sense of ownership. When students can feel this – they are off and running.

Were you engaged as a student? Reflecting back, what were some high points and low points in your own studies?

Yes (ish) but not until 3rd year.

I went to a very traditional university in Tasmania – lectures, tutorials – that sort of thing. I was very shy and not really engaged until 3rd year when I was working on my own project – collecting data and so forth. That’s when I became engaged in my studies. The outcomes were clear to me – conduct the research and test the hypothesis.

As a shy student I had to either hide behind other students or be well-prepared in advance of tutorials. I finally overcame my shyness when I was an honours student working with a group of students who knew each other well. A warm, accepting atmosphere is important for students.

High points: When I finally became immersed in my own research.

Low points: Boredom. Well…grey-dom. I had a teacher once with a very strong accent and I couldn’t understand much of what he said. It didn’t help that the subject was metaphysics. I bought myself Pelican books (whatever happened to them?), that popularised esoteric subjects and they saw me through.

Read more of John's reflections on engagement next week. Do any of our blog readers have their own reflections - past or present - on best and worst examples of student engagement? Click on the link to comments below this post.

Announcing the ATN Assessment Conference Keynote speakers

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The organising committee of the ATN Assessment conference is proud to announce the following internationally recognised educators who will present keynote papers and workshops:

Professor John Biggs - Internationally renowned for his work in teaching and learning in Higher Education; Honorary Professor in Psychology, University of Hong Kong
Dr Catherine Tang - Educational Consultant; Former Head Educational Development Centre Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Professor Sally Brown - Pro Vice Chancellor, Assessment Learning and Teaching Leeds Metropolitan University

We are also delighted to have presentations from successful grant recipients from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (formally the Carrick Institute).

Dr Diana Quinn

Convenor: ATN Assessment Conference

Learning and Teaching Unit
University of South Australia

Call for contributions - How do YOU engage students in assessment?

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The ATNConference08 committee is calling for for YOUR contributions to what is shaping up to be an exciting conference with some highly-regarded national and international keynote speakers (details soon).

Your paper should address one of the following themes:

Transforming assessment and feedback for student engagement

Cultural and academic diversity: designing assessment to engage all students

Discipline-based practices in engaging students in assessment

Using technology to enhance engagement in assessment.

The key dates for papers are:

Call for papers: May 2008

Abstracts due: 14 June, 2008

Full papers due: 18 August 2008

We look forward to your contributions.

Andrea Duff

on behalf of the ATN Assessment Conference Committee

Welcome to the ATN Conference Blog

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On behalf of the ATN Conference organising committee, we would like to welcome you to our blog about the conference. In the blog, we hope to post the latest conference news about 'Engaging Students in Assessment'.

As we're all about 'engagement', we hope that you will engage with our blog, firstly by subscribing.

It's easy enough to do. Just:

enter your email address in the Feedburner box on the side navigation bar

copy the encryption code

remember to click on the subscription email when it arrives in your inbox.

Secondly, please do post comments with your suggestions, questions and observations about the conference.

We look forward to meeting you in Adelaide in November.

Dr Diana Quinn

Associate Director, Flexible Learning Centre

ATN Conference Convenor

University of South Australia