Week 3 – The assessment
Back in week 1 I said I had been lying to my students. Which I have. Kinda.
The lie stems from the assessment.
I have never assessed a unit in this way. Which I haven’t, not a whole unit. But I have run assessment like this, many times before. All I have really done is changed the weighting.
To understand, maybe we should return to ‘The Office’.
In the office there were four projects. Three formative, which had feedback that was delivered in time for them to action it on the final project, and then a final summative project[1].
After ‘The Office’, I created a core unit for Civil Engineering called Civil Engineering Practice. The unit was where we covered all the AHEP4 (The Engineering Council’s requirements for accredited programmes) professional practice learning outcomes. As these are required for professional accreditation it is not enough to include them in group projects, where there is no guarantee that aspect of the project was covered by a student, so we went for ‘The Office’ ‘plus’. It was similar to ‘The Office’ in that students did a series of formative projects which led into a summative project. The ‘plus’ element was they then had to write an individual reflective report, and in the original version, have an interview, which covered how they had fulfilled the learning objectives of the unit. The report and interview didn’t just cover the summative project, it included the formative ones as well, which works wonders for student engagement on formative work.
This is what I observed on the project work on that unit: when projects were formative students were able to step into the slightly awkward requirements with imagination and verve. For example, imagine you are a team at a company and you are bidding to work on a job, you are not doing the job, you are bidding to do the job, so you need to tell your potential client how you will do it, not do it. Which is a bit of a head scratcher for our budding engineers, but they took on the challenge and some tried really creative approaches. Then the summative project comes along, and the engineers suddenly found it hard to take the risks, to step back and look at the bigger picture, instead reverting to type and over obsessing about the detail.
So, for this unit I wanted to ask: what if all the projects are formative and the assessment is just on the reflection? What if we enable students to go big, think creatively, challenge themselves, and can then reflect on the outcome?
And what if the projects, rather than ramping up in complexity, instead build on different processes, different measures of sustainability, different types of brief? And because the projects are formative the student may find that for them their best outcome comes not at the end, but in the middle, or even at the start, and to discover this about themselves would be a win.
So that is what we are doing.
Three projects.
Three different types of design brief.
Three design approaches.
Three different ways of measuring sustainability.
On the unit map you can see these highlighted against the three projects. The brief type is ‘defined’, ‘negotiated’ or there is no brief, but there is a community that they need to observe. The design approach is either traditional, the double diamond[2] or the continuous place-based design process[3]. And the measurement is either a single criteria (for example the LCA of the carbon emissions), a holistic set of criteria, selected depending on the type of project, or a regenerative measurement (more on that in a few weeks). These projects are all done in groups. But because they are formative, I don’t need to worry about how much effort each person puts in, because they don’t get a mark.
Instead, the students collect evidence of their own learning and contribution using a recording system I used when I worked in industry, and which we used on the Civil Engineering Practice unit. And as most of the students have done nothing like this before they submit their learning records for more formative feedback after their first project to ensure they are collecting the right type of information and evidence.
They then use their learning records as the basis of their reflective report. Following the second project they write a short (max 2 sides) reflection on how they have developed and what they have learnt between project 1 and 2 which they submit for formative feedback. They then, after all three projects are done and they have received feedback on all three plus feedback on their learning records and reflective report they submit their final reflective report which brings all the learning into one place.
Have I used this form of assessment before – yes I have.
Have I used this form of assessment exclusively to provide a unit mark, no. Which is why I said that the assessment is novel.
How does approaching a unit in this way play out in the classroom, well that is the topic for next week’s post.
[1] https://bilt.online/the-office-episode-6/
[2] https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-resources/the-double-diamond/
[3] https://constructivist.co.uk/continuous-place-based-design/#:~:text=Traditional%20design%20often%20begins%20with,desk%20study%20or%20mapping%20exercise.
