Author: Phil Race

Inclusive assessment, etc.

‘Responding to diversity and widening participation’ which was Chapter 8 in the 2005 edition of ‘Making Learning Happen’ is not included in the new 3rd edition (2014). This  is partly because the topic of inclusive learning has grown so much, and really needs a book of its own nowadays, and partly because I expanded the discussion of assessment so much in the third edition. Therefore it was agreed that this chapter from the 2nd edition (slightly abridged) should be freely available, probably on the Sage website linked to the third edition in due course, but meanwhile on my website. MLH 2005 Ch.8 (755 downloads) .

For greater depth I am pleased to recommend ‘Towards Inclusive Learning in Higher Education: developing curricula for disabled students: Mike Adams and Sally Brown (2006), Abingdon: Routledge’, which is available as a kindle book now too.

St Mary’s University: 7th April

First, congratulations to St Mary’s for achieving full University status very recently. I enjoyed my visit today. Here are the main slides we used (plus the additional ones on self-assessment which I promised). St Mary's University (689 downloads) They are not necessarily in the order in which I presented them, as I dipped and dived into various presentations. (for anyone who wished for more, there’s more on Lectures in the Edinburgh post below, and more on assessment in the Plymouth post below and on the Assessment page of this website).

Plymouth PGCAP: 4th April

Here are the main slides I used in our workshop together Plymouth Pgcap (647 downloads) . You can find more detail of my thinking on essays and exams on the ‘Assessment’ page of this website. I enjoyed working with you all, and will be working on the paperwork we generated about the pass/fail criteria, which will go up on your course web pages soon, and look forward to working with you again on 3rd June.

Essays

Those who’ve been at my workshops will have heard me rage against the over-use of essays as an assessment device. I often say ‘we can’t mark them fairly’. Or ‘we tend to reward waffling and wordsmithing rather than depth of thought’ and so on. More important, except for exam essays, do we really know who did them? ‘Whodunit?’ is a real problem in coursework essays. Don’t blame the students – it’s our fault for using a dodgy assessment format!
And they take for ever to mark (let alone all the time to write them). It’s like the bear hunt – we can’t go over them, we can’t go under them, we’ve just got to go right through them!
I’ve tried to put some of my thoughts into words in my last two books, and am revisiting these thoughts in the forthcoming editions of these, and attach these thoughts here, in case they are helpful to you – especially if the bane of your life is marking essays (or indeed writing them!). Essays (1469 downloads)

Extracts on traditional handwritten time-constrained exams

This download shows some of my comments on traditional time-constrained written exams, as in my final manuscript of ‘Making Learning Happen: 3rd edition’ (now at proofs stage and due out in May this year) and a short extract from ‘The Lecturer’s Toolkit: 3rd edition’ (2007) presently being revised for a new edition in 2015. Exams extracts (1057 downloads) There are also extracts from the latter revised source in some recent posts on my site.
(In both books, I then go on to analyse in a similar way many different assessment formats, including structured exams, OSCEs, essays, reports, portfolios, presentations and so on).