University of Birmingham: Chemistry: 14th December

I thoroughly enjoyed my day working with you – and particular thanks to Natalie Rowley, NTF for looking after me throughout the day. Here are the combined slides for the two sessions I ran, as usual without most of the pictures and links (my max file size is 2Mb, hence some necessary trimming). Birmingham-2016-ww.pptx (580 downloads)
As you can tell, I got home successfully, and only 4 minutes late – well done, Crosscountry. However, the train was jam-packed full, and it took me 5 different seats to reach Newcastle (sad,
Crosscountry – there’s feedback for you). I wish you all well in tackling the issues we raised – and of course a great Christmas and fulfilling 2017.
This is most likely me ‘over and out’ for this year, so all best wishes to anyone else who reads this.

University of Huddersfield: School of Education: 1st December

Thanks for joining with me for the session ‘Towards assessment AS learning’ this afternoon. I’d like you now to think back to the hour you spent assessing one of your own assessment elements, and as a result, deepening your thinking about learning as well as reliability, validity, authenticity and manageability of assessment. Here are the main slides we used – a short file of the 14 time-saving ideas I floated, and a long one of the background and tasks.  HUd-2016-14-ideas-w.pptx (590 downloads)   Hud-2016-w.pptx (568 downloads) . (I’ve transcribed your post-it responses to the ‘if only I’ task – food for reflection?).
I look forward to seeing you again on 11th January, to follow through on how best to address feedback to students (and from students). [Sorry that not one of you Tweeted your feedback to me during the session; ‘the student voice’ becomes important in NSS 2017].
Meanwhile, have a great Christmas, and a splendid New Year.

At UEA, Norwich: 16 November

I led a workshop on ‘Making Assessment and Formative Feedback More Effective and Manageable’ at Environmental Sciences yesterday at 1400-1630, where among other things I asked participants to prioritise the top 9 of 14 ideas I introduced for doing so. I’ve divided the slides into two files the ‘main’ is the short file about the 14 suggestions, and the ‘sides’ comprise the big file of bits and pieces of background and tasks which we did.  UEA-main-w.pptx (584 downloads) UEA-sides-w.pptx (567 downloads)
In the spirit of the principles of feedback dialogue, I’ve now added a transcript of the post-its you completed at the start of the workshop, annotated with my brief replies to the points each of you raised.  Post-its-and-dialogue-w.docx (566 downloads)
I feel that you’ve moved ‘out of kilter’ with many institutions in the sector, in that I don’t believe in marking any work twice, once in draft and the next as ‘final’, with feedback at both stages. Also, as you know, feedback comments on summative work are rarely really useful to students. I know you’re doing some of these things with the best of intentions for your students, but the tasks you have set yourselves bring far too much strain – and even create some ‘learned dependency’ among students, where it’s best to use assessment to liberate them from dependency. In the ‘sides’ file, I’ve now included several extra elements which I hope will help you see the bigger picture, and gain some further ideas for new ways of moving forward with formative feedback – especially the essential ‘dialogue’ elements we discussed.
You can follow the event on Twitter using the hashtag #philatuea. Thanks to Dr Gill Seyfang for arranging this event.

Feedback: Digest from LTHEchat65

I’ve worked through the massive Twitter material from the very busy Tweetchat earlier this week, and converted many of the answers to my six questions into a Word document. It is here attached – thanks to Simon Rae for permission to include his great graphic for the chat.  Tweetchat65-digest-phil-race.docx (696 downloads) Thanks to the many contributors – you can identify them if you wish on the related ‘Storify’ on Twitter.
(The ‘homework’ link of extracts from my books (with updates) is present in the post below this one).
You may also be interested in my October SEDA blog piece on ‘Reflection on Demand’ the link to which is  https://thesedablog.wordpress.com/2016/10/13/reflection-on-demand/#more-543

Birkbeck: 28th July

Here are the slides and grid that we used in our workshop about applying for PFHEA. (The slides cover the whole scheme, so you can see the differences between PF and SF). We wish you well in putting your applications together.  UKPSF-recognition-slides-2015-w.pptx (697 downloads)   grid-2015-11-1.docx (607 downloads) Here also is a very useful list of questions for aspirant PFs compiled by Sally, which should help a lot in putting together applications. Questions-for-PF-w-4.docx (590 downloads)

Race(s) for the future

Sally and I are delighted to see the first photograph of our new tiny grandchildren Chloe (on the left) and Molly Race (on the right) in a cot together, in Swansea, breathing by themselves and looking quite happy with themselves. We will be going to see them again tomorrow for a couple of days, en route to our penultimate Chloe and Mollysummer working day at Birkbeck on Thursday.