Show, Tell and Talk – What does authentic assessment look like?

Overview: 

Register here  Students wishing to attend this event can register on Eventbrite. 

This is one event in a series of workshops in this year’s BILT Show, Tell and Talk series which aim to explore local research and showcase examples of innovative practice across the university. In this session staff from across the University will demonstrate how they have embedded authentic assessments in different disciplinary areas.  

Contributions include/Contributor abstracts:  

Dr Anthi Chondrogianni  (Senior Lecturer in Economics) 

Our graduates are employed in a wide range of sectors, such as banking, consulting, government, start-ups and think-tanks. Therefore, economics students are required to develop a wide range of skills throughout their degrees, from data analysis to communicating with non-specialist audiences, to be well-equipped for their future careers. At the same time, due to the increasing number of students, it is critical to ensure the quality of graduates is not jeopardised. From a pedagogical perspective, to help students genuinely developed these skills, it is important to design assessments that do not focus exclusively on traditional, for our field, skills, such as academic writing, and economic application. In my talk, I will discuss how I introduced a two-stage summative assessment that helps students develop both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills, as they are often termed. It will also cover some important challenges that had to be addressed to ensure disabled students’ learning and teaching is supported in line with the university’s guidelines. 

Dr Neil Carhart (Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering) 

From designing weather satellites to constructing wind-turbines and maintaining high-speed railways, engineering students are trained in a broad range of theories, tools and techniques they will be expected to put into practice as professionals in their chosen discipline.  Such skills are used in the service of delivering effective, efficient and sustainable systems that meet societies’ needs. These complex challenges cannot be solved by a single sector working in isolation. They involve collaboration with economists, creative industries, politicians, chemists, social scientists, the public and many others. While technical skills may form the building blocks of a professional engineers’ abilities, their higher-order skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication and complex problem-solving form the mortar that binds them together and allows them to be put to meaningful use.  This short talk will share experiences of a summative assessment that aims to allow students to demonstrate some of these higher-order learning outcomes, on a complex real-world challenge, and applying the sorts of tools they will likely use as practising engineers. 

Domi Duff (3rd Year undergraduate Psychology student and BILT Student Fellow for active and authentic learning) 

There is general agreement that authentic assessment is useful in a number of ways but what do students think about what is already in place? In this session, I will present the findings from student feedback questionnaires and interviews to outline the student voice on their recent authentic assessments, considering their wants and needs with the aim of improving student buy-in and promoting the good work already taking place. 

Jess McCormack (Lecturer in Theatre and Performance) and Alice Bebber, CJ Coppin, Amy O’Mahony (2nd year Theatre students)

Working in collaboration with the UOB Engaged Learning Team, this project was designed to support BA Theatre and Performance Studies students on the ‘Applied Theatre’ unit to engage in a project with a local community or education-based organisation. Working in small groups, the students initially worked with one community or education-based organisation to identify and gain insight into specific challenges facing that organisation or specific campaign/mission the organisation is working on, before designing and delivering a programme of theatre/creative arts activity (including creative workshops and/or performance) to respond to their proposal and benefit the organisation’s needs.  This community engaged learning project aimed to provide opportunities for BA Theatre and Performance Studies students to learn through practice and apply their creative facilitation and creative directing and producing skills to real-world community or education-based projects. This project also aimed to encourage students to become active and creative citizens by providing them with the opportunity to gain insight into and respond to specific challenges facing community and/or education-based organisations. This short talk will explore how this unit was designed and delivered and share experiences of a summative assessment that asked students to demonstrate some of the learning outcomes that emerged when they applied their creative facilitation and creative directing and producing skills to complex real-world projects.  

This year the students worked with Bristol Refugee Rights, ACTA Community Theatre, Friends of Hillfields Library, May Park Primary School and the University of Bristol Faculty of Arts Widening Participation Team.