Portraying Assessment Enhancing the students` experience

Portraying Assessment
Enhancing the students' experience
The University of Wolverhampton
Rich Exchanges 2014
Peter Day and Harvey Woolf
Context
students’ views on
the crit
and other written
evaluation tools
using images to
explore students’
perceptions of
assessment
The Art Crit – Key Findings
How do you make a Firing Squad Less Scary?
Deep concerns amongst students towards being criticised; they expressed
emotional and fear-focused responses towards feedback, amplified by the
public nature of the Crit.
The Crit model is the opposite of the prescriptive teaching style students
have previously encountered
Students value the Crit and (verbal) feedback, however it appears to be the
least successful model for those who are struggling the most. These students
have nothing or little to present and feel ignored.
The process is at least divisive, splitting those students for whom the process
works and those for whom it does not.
Day, P. 2013 “How to make a Firing Squad Less Scary: The Art Critique.” The
Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education 5.
Limitations of NSS
Yorke, Mantz, Susan Orr, and Bernadette Blair. 2014. "Hit by a Perfect Storm?
Art & Design in the National Student Survey." Studies in Higher Education 39 (10)
Bennett, Roger, and Suzanne Kane. 2014. "Students’ Interpretations of the
Meanings of Questionnaire Items in the National Student Survey." Quality in
Higher Education 20 (2)
Recent work on using images in HE
research on assessment
Brown, Gavin T. L., and Zhenlin Wang. 2013. "Illustrating
Assessment: How Hong Kong University Students Conceive
of the Purposes of Assessment." Studies in Higher Education 38
(7)
McKillop, C. . 2006. "Drawing on Assessment: Using Visual
Representations to Understand Students’ Experiences of
Assessment in Art and Design." Art,Design & Communication in
Higher Education 5 (2)
Initial Images and Student Analysis
In September 2014 at Induction Level 4 Photography
Undergraduate students were asked to do two things
1. Take an image using any image making device that
visualised assessment to them.
2. Analyse the image produced in words
Falling behind
and failing
This photo shows a student who has
fallen behind on his work. Falling
behind and failing I believe is the
worst fear you can have through out
education. From past experience in
college I have learned that falling
behind is very stressful and catching
back up is just as bad. The mess on
the bed describes how his head is
feeling because when you have fallen
behind your head is a mess and you
will never do the optimum amount
of work.
My View
My
view
(Struggling,
Challenging,
Stressing,
Difficult
etc)
of
assessments..
Failure
Failure.
Feeling as if not good enough at
what you want to do.
Alone.
Feeling of you can't speak up or
voice out an opinion
Atelophobia
The Fear of Imperfection.
The Fear of Never Being Good Enough
this image shows a simple definition of
the correct term of being inferior and
of never being sufficient enough to
succeed this image explains simply and
clearly fear is present and assesment
causes anxiety though these can be
solved with time and experience during
the
study
period.
Assessment
Pressure
Re-sit
Fail
this image represents my feelings and
anxiety when thinking about my
work being assessed and the fact of
being scrutinized the notebook shows
the fears and the ultimate fears of
failure and being a dissapointment
to others
Assessment, in my
mind, is a stop on a
long journey to some
where else
The red stop signal in the image
represents, to me, the assessment stage.
This is when one is required to stop or
pause and present work so far for
evaluation, the stop light represents
danger to a train driver, I also see
assesments as a way of pointing out
danger, to highlight if i'm falling behind
or not producing good quality work so
the "journey" will not be completed.
The green signal obviously represents
go and, when I'm assessed, this is the
signal I would hope to see afterwards,
to represent all is well and I'm good to
proceed, which is the signal a train
driver
Praying
Structure
28 November 2014
Rich Exchanges
15
Next steps
28 November 2014
Rich Exchanges
16
End