PG cert Seminar January 24th, 2022, approaches to designing and planning for learning.
Even though the title of the semiar was ‘approaches to designing and planning for learning’, most interesting for me at this seminar, was the conversation about the challenges of grading creative arts, which seemed to take focus. In the comic below, Calvin highlights some mystifying qualities of art and the artworld.
Lovell (2018) writes that in the comic strip above, Calvin is questioning the subjectivity in valuing art, and the legitimacy of the artisit’s interpretation, as Watterson appears to parody the artist’s contribution to society, whether in comics or other mediums.
Fortunately, in my role as study skills tutor, I am not tasked with grading artistic processes, but I am meant to guide students to the best grade achievable but again, fortunately only in their written submissions as I’m not responsible for grading creative projects, which seems so ambiguous to me, an outsider from creative arts.
TRANSPARENCY IN GRADING
What I do know is, fair grading entails transparency on how grades are made, and what needs to be done to achieve them, and don’t move the goal posts – or as Rowntree (1977, cited in Davies, 2012) from the PG cert reading list says, ‘to set the student off in pursuit of an un-named quarry may be merely wasteful, but to grade him (sic) on whether he catches it or not is positively mischievous’.
Despite my ambiguous perceptions about the assessment processes at higher education in the creative arts, I learned from the others that risk-taking was valued and earned a good return on a grade, as was experimentation, which are probably similar.
THE LOGGING PROGRESS TO DEMONSTRATE STUDENT PROGRESS AND ACHIEVEMENT
Most significantly, the discussion in our group reinforced the importance of process and recording students’ processes, whether it’s in portfolios or another form of documentation. And this is where I can take today’s session and apply it to my practice of developing students’ study skills. This by far, presented the most relevance to me and I get real joy when I can help a student articulate their changing perceptions of their making through to realisation.
To add to the above, there is really, very little reason that I should find the assessment processes in higher education in the creative arts ambiguous, as it is clearly identified on the UAL website that:
Step 4: linking unit learning outcomes to assessment criteria: At UAL each of the learning outcomes needs to be linked to at least one of the five assessment criteria:
Enquiry; Knowledge; Process; Communication; Realisation
I have come across this assessment criteria outline before with my students, and I find the list helpful; it helps me navigate through the expectations of the students’ coursework and progress.
AUTHENTIC TUTOR/STUDENT FEEDBACK DIALOGUE
To return to the seminar on the 24th, strong positive feelings pervaded over the day regarding student-tutor partnership and the importance of emancipation in students participating actively in their learning journey, through staff facilitating autonomy in learning, as well as enthusiastic statements supporting the importance of constructive feedback to students that lent itself to dialogic approach (Although, I do see my students struggling with too much autonomy sometimes). Below is Calvin’s friend Susie getting feedback from her work.
FUNNY CARTOON
Bill Watterson
Susie and Calvin got feedback from their quiz.
UPSETTING HIERARCHIES AT WORK
The day concluded with some melancholy, with frustrated sentiments expressed around the lack of partnership between the working roles of technicians and academics at UAL, feelings that I have witnessed traveling up and down the institutional hierarchies, a long-standing issue.
Sir Ken Robinson (2010)
This dissent and unhappiness would be evidence of structural elements of the institution that reflect value systems with political underpinnings, that really just aren’t democratic enough, as expressed through financial reward or respect.
MEASURING ACHIEVEMENT BY MATCHING LEARNING OUTCOMES TO ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
The following quote kind of consolidated the session. It comes from the Davies’ (2012) reading:
‘Constructive alignment, again Biggs’s notion (2003), attempts to tackle an important issue relating to the coherence of the programme of study and the student experience of it. There has to be a relationship between what a student is expected to do (the intended learning outcomes) on a programme, the programme content and delivery that supports the student’s achievement and the process and judgments by which the quality of the learning is determined (assessment criteria).‘
Line it up. Probably easier said than done.
Golfstr (2022)
References
Davies, A. (2012) Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem? In Networks. University of Brighton.
Golfstr (2022) Why are you missing short putts? Available at: https://golfstr.com/why-are-you-missing-short-putts/ [accessed 22.02.2022]
Lovell, R. (2018) Teaching Philosophy with Calvin and Hobbes. Available at: https://sites.tufts.edu/phil4chil/2018/06/05/teaching-philosophy-with-calvin-and-hobbes/ [accessed 22.02.2022]
Robinson, K. (2010) Changing Educational Paradigms. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U [accessed 22.02.2022]