Teaching And Assessing Geology Over 30 Years: Some Personal
Observations:
Prof Graham Taylor (Associate Professor (Reader) in Earth Science, University of
Canberra)
Gathering and Responding to Student Feedback:
Helen King (University of Southampton)
Equal Opportunities in Assessment: enabling all students to effectively
demonstrate their learning:
Helen King (Project Manager, Earth Science Staff Development, University of
Southampton)
Assessment | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home
Graham Taylor
30 years ago (a generation ago) universities were very different from now. When I first went to university I was one of a very small proportion of the eligible community to make it there, I was privileged. There were less than 50% of the present number of universities presently in Australia, in fact my own university had just been up-graded from a technical college and the university I am now at had not even been thought of.
How were universities different? They had many less students. There was less pressure to be accountable to the government, the university executive or the clients (students). Post graduate students made up a smaller proportion of the population. Pressure on staff to undertake research was less, and research funds easier to obtain. To get to university one had to pay fees or have a scholarship or be indentured. Students wore a skirt or shirt and tie. Geology was considered a science.
What are Australian universities like now? They have many more students (something like 50% of the eligible population attends), meaning generally that academic levels at intake have fallen. This is not to say the best students are not still there but there are many who never would have made it 30 years ago. Academic quality of intake has been diluted. Our clients are different and have different demands from those of 30 years ago. The pressure to be accountable to government has increased beyond the point of rationality and as academics we spend significant amounts of our time justifying what we do rather than doing it. Accountability to students has also changed. We are now expected to provide all sorts of detail to them against which they can hold us responsible. Let me give just one example to illustrate the positives and negatives of this. It is required at the University of Canberra that we provide students with a unit outline. This tells the students what the curriculum for the unit is, what the learning outcomes are, how the unit will be assessed, who is teaching in it, and so on. While such a document is useful to the student to let them know what's coming and to the teacher to get their thought organised, it is also inhibitory because it lock teachers in and provides students with opportunity to appeal results. It also provides administrators with the potential to cost our teaching and insist on changes to reduce costs. It deprives academics of taking advantage of unplanned eventualities during the semester that may advantage the students and units (e.g. a prominent visitor passing through). The reduction in the academic standards of the overall intake requires we, as responsible academics, cater to our whole clientele thus either reducing the intellectual content of our degrees or teaching more and faster, or develop more efficient teaching strategies. I guess it is this last point that this paper is about. But before progressing let me also observe that 30 years ago geology was a science, now, with the increasing need for geologists to be accountable to society (through activity affecting the stock market, safety of engineering constructions, etc.) professional registration places additional demands on universities to ensure graduates are registrable. As most professional bodies are conservative by nature, their registration requirements are not always compatible with effective teaching, assessment and learning. How to match client needs (students and society), teaching strategies, assessment requirements and learning outcomes is the question all of us have to battle with in our every move.
One other factor that has changed markedly over the past 30 years is the proportion of students who must work to maintain their studies. I would guess we now have few students who are genuinely 'full time'. Most seem to have at least one part-time job and often more. This imparts a time pressure on students we were not used to as little as 10 years ago.
In most universities academics have a multitude of duties to perform, teaching is but one of them. How to we incorporate all the other things including research, administration and committee work, community service, and professional enhancement, with our teaching to produce sensible work loads? If we are not efficiently doing this then it is almost inevitable that the quality of our teaching related activity would decrease.
It is in this context that I wish to make some observations on teaching, learning and assessment in geology courses.
At UC we have a small staff (4 academics, 2.5 technicians and 1 support officer). Our course is thus fairly focussed, and historically our graduates have found employment in the mineral exploration industry so we concentrate our effort there. As much of our effort is directed to regolith geology in exploration this also fits well with land use planning and ecology courses offered in our Faculty so a degree of cross-course teaching occurs.
We ensure students receive a sound grounding in chemistry, physics, biology, and earth science at first year, continuing with earth science, soils, regolith geology, spatial data techniques and an optional unit into second year. In third year students do applied earth science, remote sensing and GIS plus an option. Selected students are offered places in a fourth year honours course that consists of research training and an individual field-based research project and a reading assignment.
There is a close integration of the undergraduate course with our research centre, the Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape Evolution and Mineral Exploration (CRC LEME). The Centre provides teaching, scholarships for undergraduates and honours students and summer scholarships for professional experience. CRC LEME has research laboratories in Perth, Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane and employs about 70 professional earth scientists. The opportunities for integrating research and teaching are immense, and we are able to call on 'guest lecturers' and arrange field classes to many active research sites around Australia. The Centre also supports undergraduates and honours students to attend relevant national conferences.
What is the purpose of teaching? Books have been written on this subject, but for me it comprises a relatively simple set of aims. These include (in no particular order):
There are many ways one can achieve these aims, and in large part this depends on the personality of the teacher and the way they relate to their students. In geology we are lucky in many respects because fieldwork is a vital part of our curricula and this enables us to get to know our students as individuals better than in many other disciplines. Careful observation of students during field sessions allows us to readily assess how various students work, think and learn. Similar outcomes can be gained from practical classes and tutorials, but these always tend to be more formal than fieldwork so getting to know your students is more difficult.
Let me outline some of the teaching techniques I employ.
Lectures
Lectures are still an efficient method of information transfer. They have problems,
particularly among first year students who are used to being fed the information they
require at high school. They tend to want to ensure all you say is recorded. To partially
overcome this I have provided summaries of lectures in note form and more recently on the
web. A high proportion of students in first year still persist in trying to take down all
you say despite these summaries being available. In an attempt to overcome this I engage
students in the lecture by:
Students use the web notes a lot, about 80% of students access the notes at least once during the course of a semester and about 20% weekly. How often 'hard copy' notes were referred to when I used them, I can not say.
I have tried running smaller classes at higher levels without lectures, but using tutorials to discuss pre-set reading and research. The results have mostly been disappointing, perhaps because of the time pressure students now have.
Practical classes
In practical classes the major task is to develop the knowledge gained from lectures,
tutorials and study, and to develop skills in working with materials and data handling.
How this is done depends on how the practical assignments are set up and on any tutors
used. In first year classes it is common to use tutors, but it is essential they be aware
of the work to be done and committed to the learning outcomes of the unit. This requires
careful preparation of tutors.
I have used many approaches to practical class teaching including:
Computer based learning for practical work during the junior years is difficult, because students need to work with geological materials as an integral part of the experience at this level. In later years there are many computer aided learning packages that have been used successfully by colleagues, but dislike divorcing myself so much from students.
Field teaching
Another other major part of teaching in geology is fieldwork. I have always endeavoured to
incorporate as much field time as possible in my teaching. In Canberra we are lucky, as
there are many very instructive sites within reach during a three-hour practical class, so
as well as longer field trips we are able to use practical classes for meaningful field
visits. All fieldwork is designed to develop skills including:
Communication
Communication is an essential part of training any professional. The market we supply
(mineral exploration) demands effective communication both within the company and outside.
Teaching communication skills is not easy on top of the geological knowledge and skills
that are required, but we attempt this via:
Having set out something about teaching and some of the ways I go about trying to achieve what I set out to do the next step is to see how successful I am. Assessment of the student's performance is one way of doing this.
Why assess students? Any number of reasons, but basically to:
The community and students require our imprimatur, after all that is why students come to university and why employers value a degree.
It is the first of these reasons I think is most important. As academics we should ensure that we combine learning and assessment. This is not always easy. Assessment that provides good learning outcomes is generally time consuming. It is true there are computer-based assessment techniques that provide feedback on knowledge acquisition and reasoning ability but they are not very good at providing feedback on many other learning outcomes we seek (developing an argument from data, data processing and manipulation, field skills, report writing). Deep learning occurs as a result of student desire to learn, not because they wish to pass the next test. (That will occur anyhow if learning is thorough). Student learning is, in my experience, enhanced when the students see that staff care enough to devote time to feedback, not simply relegating the job to a computer. It is true that teachers are better able to track knowledge acquisition of students via computer based assessment and students find out what they got wrong or right quickly, but is this true feed back? Do you know how or why a student could not get the right answer to a computer based question bank? Can you follow their reasoning in reaching their conclusion? Can you assess answers to questions that have no right or wrong answer? I answer no to all these questions.
Over the years I have tried a lot of different assessment techniques, always with the above reasons for assessing students in mind. Let me know share with you some of my experiences.
I have used computer marked multiple choice examinations and tests for many years, particularly in large (( 100) classes to enable rapid turnaround in results and some feedback to students on their progress. My group at UC have also tried various computer-based assessment (CBA) packages to assess students both as tests and for students to monitor their learning progress. Our overall impression is that, while CBA is useful for students to see how well they are accumulating facts, it serves few other desirable learning outcomes. Despite having set CBA that are very simple and very complex ones which take ages to put together, I find that because of the nature of such testing we only test knowledge and, in a limited way, reasoning ability.
So much of the knowledge, reasoning and paradigms we wish to assess have no right/wrong answer, but fall in a field bounded by a set of parameters, or have answers that evolve from following one of several lines of logic. For example, what is the correct answer to this multiple choice questions (MCQ), or even the most appropriate answer?
Well-sorted medium-grained sand is a deposit typical of:
a) beaches
b)rivers
c)dune sands
d)glacial outwash plains
e)all of the above
Any or all of (a) to (e) could be correct. I know it is a bad MCQ, but it is a reasonable question to ask a first or second year geology or geomorphology student and it may be just the sort of question to you wish to ask. It is typical of the types of MCQs that come with teacher packs accompanying textbooks or that I see in CBA questions put together by less experienced colleagues.
Effective CBAs take a long time to prepare, sometimes years to refine, eliminate non-discriminatory questions, ensure you are using questions that assess all facets of your learning outcomes, and are clear and unambiguous. The natural result of this is that having developed a CBA bank of questions you are loath to release them to students who may establish an 'open market' for your question bank. Where is the feedback value in these assessments?
Another problem I have experienced is that having got together a question bank, I forget what is in it, teach the unit, and put together the assessments which may contain items not taught. Once the students see the exam there is a howl of justifiable outrage. Perhaps this says more about the human factor than the assessment method, but we are all human, (including our students).
There is a place for intelligent CBA, but as yet it is my opinion that there are no systems capable of meeting the criticisms I have noted. I will, however continue to use them for students to monitor their progress and for large classes. The meeting of the UK Earth Science staff development group at an earlier meeting discussed this problem and recommended CBA as worth the effort, or the premise that that staff have to start somewhere. I partially agree, but I also agree with students from Liverpool who commented that they 'don't want to lose the human touch'.
I use the internet regularly to put all my lecture overheads, diagrams and photographs within easy reach of students. Many come to lectures with copies of them and annotate them in lectures; others use them for lecture revision and follow up; others, a minority, don't ever access them. This latter case is interesting. Just this year it became obvious to me that despite the computer literacy school leavers are said to have, many of my 1st year students needed instruction on how to locate my lectures on the web even though I had given them the address. This was also evident in a 2nd year class using ER MAPPER and VERTICAL MAPPER to prepare interpretative maps for a field class. Many were virtually computer illiterate. The packages being used are all WINDOWS-based and quite intuitive for anyone with a little instruction and WINDOWS familiarity. Although not very computer literate myself, I could cope and am entirely self-taught. It is a recently acquired revelation that computing skills are less than I expected from the 'computer generation'. The majority of the students are probably more computer literate than me, but for those who are not, CAL or CBA are very threatening. It requires a rethink of the use of computers as teaching and learning aids when up to 20% of a class are threatened by the machines.
Peer assessment
Why use peer assessment? I see two reasons: to ensure that all students (rather than just
the lecturer or tutor) learn from the assessment item; and, to give students the
opportunity to seriously assess a piece of scientific work. It has additional benefit as a
strategy to reduce work loads on staff.
I have used peer assessment in first and second year units with mixed results. In first year I have run an exercise based on the preparation of a poster on a topic covered in the unit. For example: 'prepare a poster to explain a landscape feature of a national park with which you are familiar'. Students are given 5 weeks to prepare the poster having been given a set of guidelines for preparing posters (Table 1). These are then displayed in the department. Using the practical sessions over a two week period, students assess the posters using a prepared assessment form (Table 2). Poster owners are asked to answer questions about their poster. Tutors also mark the posters for their practical group.
| Table 1: Advice given to students on preparing a poster for assessment Poster assignment: Students are required to research aspects of landscape, aspects of some part of Soils and soil management in Australia {general topic field for 1997} and present results as a poster display. Students are encouraged to use material observed and photographed during a previous visit to examples of soils, soil erosion, soil degradation or soils related landscapes or to use sketches and diagrams of their own rather than material simply copied or cut from other materials. Presentations that demonstrate some personal input will be viewed favourably during assessment. The results of student's research are to be presented by way of a poster. The poster should:
Poster Presentations: are increasingly being used at scientific conferences to transmit information. In a hall with 200 posters the idea is to present your material so that viewers will be attracted to stop and look at your poster and discuss your work with you. Thus, you should present your material in a way that will make it stand out from those around it and be noticed. Thus may be done in many ways - humour, colour, spectacular pictures or diagrams, odd shapes or a controversial title. Poster assessment will be by tutors and peers (fellow students). The assessment will be undertaken using the form at the end of this outline {Table 2}. To understand what will be important in the assessment students should carefully examine the Poster assessment Sheet at the end of this outline. Tutors will also mark the posters using the same form as students as a check on other marks. |
Table 2: Marking schedule for the poster assignment to be marked by peers
POSTER ASSESSMENT SHEET
These sheets are to be completed by each student in each practical group for each of the other students posters in their practical group during the practical session set aside for this purpose.
| Assessment criterion | Result against each criterion |
| Technical aspects < 1.0m x 1.0m? Readable from 2m? Includes student name and ID? < 100 words? Presented on card? |
(grade each row out of 30) |
| Content On the subject given in the unit outline? Contains more information than in the textbook or lab notes? Contains original drawings / photographs? Appropriate title? Figures and / or photos are clearly labelled? |
(grade each row out of 100) |
| Presentation Legible? Easy to follow sequence of logic in presentation? Attractive (colourful, professional, fun)? Author able to explain question from peers? |
(grade each row out of 30) |
| Overall impression The poster looks good overall - I like it? |
(grade out of 30) |
| (Total grade out of 100) | |
| TOTAL |
Assessor's name ........................................................................................
Poster Author's name ................................................................................
Poster Author's ID ......................
Total Mark ......................
There is no doubt this exercise achieves the first objective. It is clearly a good learning exercise for students to read and discuss posters of their colleagues and to prepare feedback. As well as learning for the students concerned, it is common to see students from other years in geology, from other disciplines, as well as staff, reading the posters when they are displayed. In fact it has become something of a ritual for university members from all over campus come to view them.
The second objective is not well achieved at this level. The comparison of students' assessments and those of the tutors clearly demonstrate that students are lenient on their peers. Despite this, the exercise is of value as a learning experience and the final assessment is normalised using tutor marks, to obtain a reasonable mark distribution. Even so marks tend to be on the high side. This is not a problem as most students put a lot of effort into researching their chosen topic, and it is rare to find factual or interpretive errors on the posters, so student learning from the assessment is high.
I use peer assessment in second year to assess seminars. It consists of students preparing a seminar from a long list of topics, preparing a 10-minute talk to illustrate the main conceptual points of the chosen topic, and delivering it to the class. Students are provided with guidelines about what constitutes a good seminar and these are reflected in the mark sheet provided to them. The learning outcomes for the deliverer are high, since they must research the topic thoroughly. The audience benefits as they must listen, assess and ask questions of the speaker. Student marks generally closely follow mine, unlike the first year peer assessment I run.
Self-assessment is not something that I have used in other than computer aided learning tutorials as a follow-up to lectures in first year. I have not kept records of student performance on the quizzes, but feedback from students indicates many find this form of tutorial is useful.
Group work & assessment in field work
Working as a professional in the mineral exploration industry requires effective group
work and is a skill that most employers look for in graduates. Developing these skills is
not something that can be taught, but rather learnt through experience. We provide
experience in many aspects of our teaching, particularly relating to field teaching. Field
mapping exercises in three units (soil science, regolith studies and earth science
fundamentals) require students to work in groups. It is my experience that learning to
work in a group is very productive in terms of learning outcomes where students are
working relatively independently, by being able to use each other as sounding boards. The
experience of achieving goals and outcomes in a group situation is positive, as is
learning to cope with group dynamics. Additionally, as many of these projects are
undertaken in remote situations it promotes learning to rely on peers and colleagues for
your physical welfare and safety. This latter point is an essential learning outcome and
since we rarely use the same areas for these group field exercises it is critical for OHS
reasons.
The problem with group work is assessment. Although students work in groups and learn in groups, it is necessary to assess them individually in some way to check that all have had positive learning experiences. I use a variety of assessment techniques to assess individual learning from group work. These include:
In my experience all these methods of assessment of the learning outcomes are successful. Perhaps the most interesting are those involving a viva. It is in this situation where I learn most about the students learning from the exercise. Feedback to students in all these forms of assessing group work is effective. The down side of these types of assessment is that they are very demanding of staff time and therefore expensive. These expenses are offset by improved quality of feedback via staff/students interaction in the field and feedback on submitted work and/or vivas. Working in this way with these types of assessment provides of the most effective learning strategies I know.
Self-paced learning
Self-paced learning can be used to achieve a number of learning and other outcomes
including:
I have offered self-paced learning at various levels from first year onwards. In 1st year I have employed it in practical sessions. Students are provided with a handbook, materials are available continuously and a tutorial session is scheduled once a week to solve problems experienced with any of the practical work. Answers are provided once a week according to the class schedule. In 2nd and 3rd years I have replaced lectures with reading assignments to supplement text book reading and again provided tutorial or discussion sessions to assist students' understanding. Such classes have also had significant field work components (4 days minimum).
The results of this type of teaching are mixed. Overall, at all levels, pass rates have fallen by about 15%, but the grades of students who avail themselves of the assistance available, and do the work regularly and systematically, generally attain grades higher than might otherwise be expected. It may be that this style of teaching only suits self-motivated learners, but perhaps they are the students we need to concern ourselves with!
Usually students doing a unit with a component of self-paced learning require frequent feedback to assure them they are progressing. This I have achieved with tutorial discussions, essay assignments, quizzes and in one case CAL quizzes. This has worked very well for the groups who are self-learners, but not for the remainder of the class.
My experience of self-paced learning also shows clearly that students under pressure in other units they are studying will drop behind rapidly as pressures build during the teaching year. As students have to pace their work it is all too easy to rationalise pressure by putting off the work over which you have control and meet the immediate demands of other lecturers. Disaster often ensues for many students.
Much of the effective assessment I have commented on above requires substantial resources which, we know are becoming in ever shorter supply. This leads to how to deal with assessment of students in large classes and at the same time provide meaningful feedback and achieve our teaching goals.
Many are turning to CAL and CBA to assist in overcoming staff and resource shortages. There are many excellent packages to allow self paced learning and assessment available. This approach will save resources, and probably at junior undergraduate levels achieve knowledge acquisition, develop knowledge of the language of geology, instill some of our paradigms, and develop self-learning skills. On the other hand it is difficult to develop and test reasoning ability, field skills, communication skills, enthusiasm for the subject through these techniques. These arguments also apply at more senior levels but the size of classes in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years are generally much smaller then 1st year, so we tend to devote our staff and resources there rather than 1st year. This is probably a grave error as, at least in Australia, few students come to university wishing to study geology and only do so after being 'turned on' to the subject in 1st year.
I have no answers; experience tells me that teachers acting as mentors of and role models for students are probably the most effective means of maintaining their interest and enthusiasm. If we wish to maintain the vigour and professionalism of our science then we must develop ways of sustaining students numbers through our whole courses, and this means devoting significant resources to 1st year teaching and perhaps saving them in later years.
Moving back to large class assessment, I think we need to maintain a variety of assessment techniques that interest the students, give them feedback on their learning, and are sufficiently challenging that they maintain students' interest in learning geology. Diminishing personal contact will not achieve this; using intensive student/teacher ratios will cost too much; so a balance of CBA, assignments that are marked to provide personal feedback and providing tutors for practical and field classes as role models and sources of information would provide an optimal learning experience.
One issue I would like to touch on before finishing is the issue of professional accreditation. I understand it is currently an issue in the UK where the geological Society is thinking of bringing it in. In Australia we have two professional bodies representing geologists, the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (AIG) and the Australia Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM). Both have recently instituted professional registration of geologists. AIG takes a very broad view of the degree and training requirements for registration while AusIMM requires a more classical geology degree. By this I mean it must contain traditional geology sub-disciplines such as petrology, stratigraphy, palaeontology, etc., even if they are not taught under those names. Both have significant practice requirements. Table 3 lists the basic requirements of both AIG and AusIMM.
Table 3: Summary of the Criteria for registration as a professional in the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and in the Australian Institute of Geoscientists.
| AusIMM Chartered Practising Geologist Only geologists 3 year degree + 4 years experience or 4 year degree + 3 years experience Last 5 of 7 years at senior level No application fee $75 (£25) per year +$181 (£60) membership of AusIMM 50 hours /year professional development 4 referees, 3 certified Peer review required Ethical sanctions - fines |
AIG Registered Professional Geologist Any geoscientist (13 categories) 3 year degree + 5 years experience, 1 year experience for p/g degree Last 1 of 5 years at senior level $90 (£30) application fee $100 (£33) per year + $40 (£13.30) membership of AIG 50 hours /year professional development 4 referees, 2 members of AIG + 2 recognised high level professionals Peer reveiw required Ethical sanctions - no fines |
Recently the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), a minerals and petroleum lobby group, has been working hard to ensure the mining and petroleum industries are supplied with graduates who have training in areas determined by them. This applies mainly to mining engineers, petroleum engineers and metallurgists, but the effects of their activity will spin off into geology. Their intent is to do what happened in the UK under Thacher, amalgamate schools nationally and accredit those curricula they approve. The scheme seems to have stalled as the Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee has not agreed with their proposal, despite MCA offering to fund much of the change.
It is my opinion that accreditation is a good thing for the profession, but accrediting bodies need to recognise that, even in Australia, geologists do more than work in mineral exploration, mining and petroleum exploration and production. Many geology graduates (although not from my school) are employed in the environmental, engineering and land management industries. With the exception of AIG this is not the case as it is the mining and petroleum lobbies that have the dollars and government influence. I have been involved in both the AusIMM and MCA efforts to dictate curricula in geology and it is very hard to have them see the relevance of aspects of the science or profession other than those bits in which they are interested.
Teaching and learning are very dependent on human interactions and human differences. Teaching, learning outcomes and learning styles are very individual. Since in our position as teachers we have to deal with this human variability I do not think there are any recipes that can be provided on how to do it. Nor can all students be expected to learn in the same way, some are naturally inquisitive, some learn by experience, some from books, some by talking and so on. Thus while as teachers we must interprete our teaching, learning expectations and assessment, we must also provide the variety of techniques that encompasses the needs of all our students.
To conclude let me lay out some selected positive and negative aspects of assessment and teaching methods discussed above.
| Assessment / Teaching | +ives | -ives |
| Computer-based |
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Assessment | Good Practice Keywords | Authors | Titles | Institutions | Home
Notes from the 1998 UK Geoscience Education Symposium: Assessment in the
New Millennium
Written by Helen King, School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton
Workshop session facilitated by James Wisdom, Head, Educational and Staff Development,
London Guildhall University
This paper describes the student consultation method of gathering student feedback as presented and discussed by James Wisdom in a short session at the UK Geoscience Education Symposium 1998. The method relies on students actively discussing the course with a third party facilitator and experience has shown that it is popular with both students and staff and is considerably more effective than standard, written feedback questionnaires.
A programme of student consultation meetings was developed by the Education Development Unit at Kingston Polytechnic (now University) in 1986. The programme was designed not only to help lecturers but also to provide a systematic means of identifying educational development needs across the institution.
A consultation takes approximately 1¼ hours The 'pyramid' or 'snowball' technique is used to facilitate the group discussion (see appendix). Two external (to the course) members of staff are used, these may be educational developers or local support staff such as librarians, technicians, competent postgraduates etc.. The discussion is entirely confidential but a report is produced from notes compiled on an OHP. The discussion takes place in three stages:
Stage 1: Individual Work Stage (5-10 minutes)
Initially, the students are asked to make notes on their response to the following
statement:
"We are interested in anything that is affecting the way you are learning this
course."
Positive Points:
What elements have been successful?
What have you enjoyed?
What should be retained in future years?
Praise?
Negative Points:
What aspects have been unsuccessful?
Do you have positive recommendations for change?
Stage 2: Group Work Stage (15-20 minutes)
After 5 to 10 minutes of working individually, the students are asked to form groups of
four.
Select a speaker / note-taker
Compare each set of points
Select the ones on which you agree or are the most important
List them in order of priority
Prepare to put them to the class during the final session
Stage 3: Plenary Stage:
This stage is recorded throughout on an OHP. Each group of students are asked to state in turn a single point which is written on the OHP for all groups to see. After each point, the other groups are asked if they have a similar issue on their lists and whether they want to elaborate or re-describe it. If it is a negative point, the students are asked to make recommendations for improvements. The consensus is recorded or, if the point is disputed, the disagreement is noted. The group should be able to discuss around 15 points in about 50 minutes.
This process is repeated with all the available years of the course and the OHTs photocopied and used as a basis for the report. The report is written with one aim in mind: To enable the course leader to make change. It is not a judgement but one perspective of the course which the course leader can take into account. A full course takes approximately 5 hours to consult on and results in a report roughly 15 sides long.
Gibbs, G. 1982. Eliciting Student Feedback from Structured Group Sessions. Educational Methods Unit
Powney, J. 1999.Closing the loop, the impact of student feedback on students' subsequent learning. Quality Assurance Agency.
Proft, T. 1988 Item Bank - An Aid to Subject Evaluation. Educational Services Unit Cumberland College of Health Studies
Wisdom, J. 1991. Student Consultation at Kingston Polytechnic. In Putting Students First: listening to students & responding to their needs. McDowell, L. (Ed.) Standing Conference on Educational Development (SCED). ISBN 0 946815 52 6
For further information contact:
James Wisdom
Head, Educational and Staff Development
London Guildhall University
31 Jewry Street
London EC3N 2EY
Email: wisdom@lgu.ac.uk
Tel: 0171 320 3150
Fax: 0171 320 3150
1) Create a strong, clear question or topic.
2) Ask the students to start by working on their own to note down whatever is appropriate, for example their answers to the question and their reasons, or solutions to the problem, or the questions or problems they would like to raise, or the points and topics they think are important. Allow 5-10 minutes. Make the time allowed very clear, and stick to it. Discourage chatting at this point. Write the instructions, the topic and any other important information on the OHP for their reference.
3) Ask the students to work in pairs, to compare what each has noted and to prepare an agreed list between them of the most important points (or whatever). As the class will now be talking, use the OHP to keep them informed. Allow 5-10 minutes. Make the time clear at the beginning and stick to it.
4) Ask the students to work in fours, fives or sixes. Again, their task is to prepare an agreed list of points, in order of priority. Declare and stick to time. One of the group will be responsible for making the list and saying it when the time comes - arrange that at the beginning. Move round the groups seeing how they are getting on, finding out if they need more time etc..
NOTE: You can leave our stage 3 (the pairs) and go straight to groups of four. If you want to have groups of five or six, better to leave stage 3 in. If you suffer from silent, shy students, keep the pairs stage. At least by the end they will have talked to somebody but even in fours they can stay silent. Don't have groups larger than six - they are too hard to manage and they make more noise. The definittion of a group (for these purposes) is that the members must be able to make eye contact. Insist on this. Move furniture, swivel students, keep the groups small if the room isn't good. They might think you are fussing but this is essential.
5) The main session. Ask each group in turn to make their first and most important point. As their spokesperson says it, write it on the OHP (or ask a student to take over the writing). Promote discussion about each point and note the essentials of the argument on the OHP. Don't let any group run away with their whole list - move round the groups evenly, perhaps taking three or four turns round the room before all the points are exhausted. The acetate roll can then be photocopied (preferably on a reducing photocopier by 71%, which is A3 to A4) and distributed later as class notes. The students might compare their initial jotting with the final discussion. For an hour's session you need to drive the early stages quickly to allow 35-40 minutes for the main session; 1½ hours is more comfortable. With practice it can be reduced to a short session at the end of a lecture to apply the content of that lecture to some practical problem or whatever.
This is a process which has been very productive. Please feel free to alter it and adapt it. You may wish to personalise it by having it re-typed with the name of the course or unit on the top. You may want to change "We" to "I" - it depends on whether you see the unit as being presented by a group of staff (such as technicians, administrators, librarians, other academic colleagues etc.) or soley by yourself. The students might ask who will see their comments.
1) Distribute the forms around the room before the students arrive.
2) Invite the students to start completing them while everyone is settling down. In a large class this might best be done by putting up a note on the overhead projector or on the whiteboard rather than repeating the request as newcomers arrive.
3) Get the class underway as if it is a normal teaching session. The students will probably add a few ideas to the form beside them during class.
4) Half way through or at a convenient stopping place, ask the students to join into small groups (perhaps in threes) to discuss what they have each written and then to complete the third question, on the second side. This might take five minutes.
5) Ask the students to leave the forms by the door as they leave.
6) When reading them through, pay attention to anything on the second side - it may be more thoughtful than the rest of the discussion.
7) Remember that students will think that you might recognise their handwriting!
When answering this, please consider anything which is affecting the way you are learning this unit.
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Helen King
School of Ocean and Earth Science, Southampton Oceanography Centre, European Way,
Southampton SO14 3ZH
(h.king@soc.soton.ac.uk)
With the opening up of HE to a more diverse range of students, due to Government policy and the Institutional recruiting need, equal opportunity in learning, teaching and assessment at a departmental level is likely to become more difficult to implement. The aim of this paper is to open out the definition of equal opportunities in the context of assessment and to identify those students it might apply to. This presentation will not deal with prejudice, for example in marking, as this is already addressed adequately by most, if not all, departments. Far from opening the equal opportunities 'Can of Worms', I hope to demonstrate that the issue can be resolved by looking at assessment strategies as they relate to all students. This paper may not say anything we don't all know intuitively already but, as was often noted at the 1998 UK Geoscience Assessment Symposium, writing down these thoughts helps to clarify them and facilitates reflection and reaction.
My perspective of equal opportunities in assessment is governed by my recent experience of staff and educational development and, in particular, my not so distant experience of the assessment of my own degree.
The issue of equal opportunities is often seen as a 'can of worms' which, once opened, brings in all kinds of concerns about policy, ethics and logistical arrangements. All Higher Education institutions have equal opportunity policies for the process of recruiting students and for helping them once they have begun their course. These policies focus on the specific task of removing prejudice based on gender, culture, physical disability etc. and ensure that potential students are recruited solely on the basis of their academic ability.
In a discipline, such as the Earth Sciences, where there is a strong emphasis on physical tasks (in the lab and field) there are many concerns regarding equal opportunities - however, these are still rare enough for each to be tackled individually. In the future, however, with an increasing number of students in HE, it may be necessary to rewrite courses rather than modifying existing ones.
What is equal opportunity?
Management books often describe equal opportunities on three levels (e.g. Equal
Opportunities: the way ahead. Jane Straw. Institute of Personal Management). These can
be translated into an HE environment as follows:
| Equal Opportunity to effectively demonstrate knowledge,
understanding and learning. ^ ^ ^ ^ Equal Chance: avoiding marking prejudice ^ ^ ^ ^ Equal Access: entry to University |
This paper does not look at prejudice or preconceived ideas (conscious or sub-conscious) but at providing learning and assessment opportunities that allow all students to effectively demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, skills etc..
(Including those people who are not as fit/nimble as others and simply cannot manage to stagger round looking at rocks all day and learn at the same time - being tired out is not conducive to learning!)
The first two of these points are not necessarily restricted to people of different
cultures to our own but also refer to people brought up in different regions, wealth bands
and 'inter-societies' of our own culture.
This list demonstrates that equal opportunities in the context of learning and assessment encompassess a significant proportion of students. To put this into perspective here is a parallel list of those students with whom we are not concerned.
This list is extremely bare and, cannot, realistically exist. All students should be given an equal opportunity to effectively demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, skills etc..
As students will have different learning styles so they will prefer different types of assessment. Unfortunately, there is no know assessment which suits everybody (including the assessor). The simple answer to this problem is to utilise a diversity of assessment techniques wherever possible. Different types of assessment test different types of understanding, for example:
Over the last few years diverse assessment techniques have been increasingly practised and the traditional end of year written exams are not the only means of judging performance. There is still a place for this type of assessment (and especially for equal opportunity purposes - some students may prefer them) but, in order for them to be effective and not just test surficial knowledge (revised the night before) they should be well structured to assess understanding e.g. analytical questions.
Diversification of assessment is an important means to an end and there are many excellent texts which explore the issue more deeply and provide information to help the teacher with facilitation (some examples are given in the bibliography). However, there is one crucial aspect of assessment which particularly impinges on the issues raised in this paper, that of identifying learning outcomes.
In order to help students to cope with assessment given their differing needs, it is important that we are explicit with them about teaching, learning and assessment, e.g.
Having worked through these ideas it became clear that, in the context of assessment, equal opportunities can be whittled down to a single overarching issue: encourage / enable students to take responsibility for their own learning.
This paper has shown my own personal view of equal opportunities in assessment and how I worked through the issues involved to come out with a single statement which, although neatly resolving a complex issue, provides many more issues, developments and changes to think about. As a note of encouragement I would like to quote a colleague educational developer Rhakesh Bhanot, who has been invaluable in helping me to think about these issues:
"My experience from both FE and HE is that where teachers have genuinely reflected on both their teaching and assessment strategies in view of non-traditional students in their classes, they have very soon come to the realisation that rather than being a hindrance, the new types of student were in fact making them better professionals and indeed better teachers for all their students. In other words, what started as an exercise in terms of dealing with 'problems' raised by a particularly group of students led them to develop skills which enabled them to help all the students to learn better." Rhakesh Bhanot, Educational Development Unit,Coventry University
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