Conference time: -
REAP Conference Fora (in programme order)
Forums > Interaction of peer & tutor feedback Session > Bates case study
Subject: Facilitator review of Bates case study

You are not authorized to post a reply.   
Author Messages  
Lewis Elton
Posts: 5
22/05/2007 17:24  
1. This is clearly a well designed and in many ways very original assessment scheme, which has been very positively evaluated. So one obvious comment is to encourage others to take up the scheme, as it stands, and see whether it transplants. This can reveal difficulties in either the scheme or in its transferability or, of course, both. So I very much hope that there will be takers!

2. The assessment is only part of a more general teaching and learning scheme which – on the basis of evaluation - is successful, although substantially unorthodox; indeed one of its outstanding features is the considerable change in it compared with even good orthodoxy.

3. The general scheme meets many of the standard objections to change:

· It is successful with a large and very mixed intake;
· It uses interactive lectures and workshops, replacing the standard tutorial-plus-laboratory format. Presumably, the ‘standard tutorial’ was largely non-interactive, while the standard laboratory was of the very old-fashioned type, where students largely go through pre-determined motions;
· Technology and online learning materials are used non-didactively, in support of student learning;
· It uses collaborative problem-solving with subsequent assessment;
· It uses teaching spaces more efficiently and intelligently.

4. The assessment of collaborative problem-solving forms the substance of the paper. Assessment is ‘soft’, ie it follows extensive feedback on on-going work before three of the group of questions in a particular week are designed to be written up for full solutions, to be handed in the following week. They are marked by staff and postgraduate students. The scheme fosters not only the ‘hard ‘ skills of a physicist, but more qualitative and more general ‘thinking’ skills.

5. Reviewing such a scheme cold from the outside is very difficult, liable – as it is – to lead to reactions by the originators such as ‘tried that; didn’t work’. So it is with considerable diffidence that I offer a suggestion for a possible – and possibly – very radical change:

· The scheme is student centred only up to the point of assessment. Should aspects of self and peer assessment (for real!!) be included?
If this was considered, why was it rejected? If not, should it be tried? I seem to recall John Cowan doing this very successfully with First Year students, who then reported on it at a SRHE conference.
You are not authorized to post a reply.  
Forums > Interaction of peer & tutor feedback Session > Bates case study > Facilitator review of Bates case study


ActiveForums 3.6