COVID RECOVERY
So, been a bit out of the game last week due to Covid and still struggling a bit with energy and head fog. Therefore, todays session felt quite hard, especially as I have also been trying to catch up with my general Course Leader role work.
The topic and discussions today felt quite ‘big’ so difficult to conclude what I really got from the session. But the main points of discussion I found interesting and close to my own practice are:
- The disconnection between technical staff and academic staff. There seem to be a current practice where technicians do a lot of the teaching, and the academic staff plan and prepare assessments as well as conducting the assessments. Technicians are not usually involved at all in the planning or the actual assessments. This is an ongoing debate which we have already tried to improve the gap by inviting the technical team to the formative assessments. However, this ‘trial’ got a bit backlash from ‘higher up’ as too many staff (2x academics and 2x technicians) were present in the students formative assessments and we were criticised for having too many staff in the same sessions. This is interesting as this would obviously be needed for technicians and academic staff to work alongside and not as separated.
This topic also relates to a comment from someone about the lack of time, sharing and planning time between academics and technicians. - Learning outcomes – and how students / staff interpret them. Discussions about measuring achievements and the positive / negative aspects around this, especially within the create arts teaching and learning.
I’m finding this topic interesting as when I started my role 5 years ago and during the revalidation process, we were as a programme steered towards a very ‘measurable’ way of writing the LOs. However, since last year and with a change of PD, we are not steered to the opposite, where the LOs need to be very ‘open for interpretation’ which causes a lot of question marks for students and staff and the parity in what we are asking them to do. I guess this relates well to the Allan Davies article discussing ambiguous vs unambiguous LOs. - We discussed the importance of experimentation and processes as part of assessments rather than ‘a final outcome’. This is again something close to my heart as been unit leading and writing the assessment brief for specifically ‘an experimental’ unit.
- We also discussed Pass / Fail units and the impact it may have on the students learning and experiences. Since last year we have trialed pass and fail units in our first years and it has caused a lot of debate in the programme team regarding students self understanding of achievement and when then being asked to submit a measured assessment, what impact does this have?
TASKS TO DO: - Book in peer observations
- Print this units assessment brief
QUESTIONS: - Are we meant to read a lot of books? Some colleagues in the sessions seem to have read many books/resources, and referring to their styles or approaches and I feel a little out of the loop of ‘famous authors’ within teaching pedagogies…