Assessment, Learning & Teaching Reflections |
Tuesday 17 January
One of my areas of interest within assessment, learning and teaching is how we can best stimulate students to engage fully in the learning process. Returning recently from the Christmas break my e-mail has been peppered with queries from students on assignments that are due in within the next few weeks. These queries were not about checking that they were on the right track but way more basic ones( elective dependency perhaps?) such as ‘What is the title of the assignment we had to do’? When is the hand in date? Which books should I use? (all information that has always been available to them in a number of ways).
The conclusion I have reached over the years is that there are a small proportion of students (and they are not always the weakest academically) for whom the ‘mechanics’ of the learning process in HE are a mystery. I wonder whether it is them or us who is at fault. There has always been a fairly high level of assessment-related anachronistic ritual and protocol embedded within HE culture. Perhaps we need to re-examine how we brief them on assessment matters so we can improve transparency for all of our students.
Cath Sanderson
