Assessment: bits of my new editions

I’ve today put together a ‘Digest’ of some quite long extracts from ‘Making Learning Happen’ (3rd edition published May 2014) and the 4th edition of ‘The Lecturer’s Toolkit’ (published this year), from the respective chapters on Assessment. These are the bits focussing on traditional assessment formats such as exams and essays, and I’ve put enough (I hope) of the preceding discussion from each chapter to set the scene. You’ll also be able to see the different styles of the two books, and sometimes compare two different ways of approaching the same topics. (These extracts are of course from my disc versions of the submitted manuscripts, and the published editions have the benefit of copy-editors’ expertise from the respective publishers). If you find this useful, please re-tweet using the button below. Also, any feedback really appreciated – thanks in advance for this. Assessment-digest-w-1-1.docx (5439 downloads)

University of Utrecht: 26th and 27th January

Sally and I are delighted to be working in Utrecht again, and are being well looked after on our visit. Here are the main slides I used in my two workshops on feedback, where I have updated the slides to include the differences between the two workshops, where I altered the order to ‘lead the witnesses’ on the 26th, and to ‘start from your experience’ on the 27th.   Utrecht2 (712 downloads)
There were not enough of you to have a workshop on small-group teaching, but thanks to a few of you for participating in a discussion and a related exercise. The main slides relating to that are here: small groups slides (708 downloads) , updated now with the three introductory slides I used. I’ve also added the booklet on ‘personal tutoring’ which I wrote with colleagues from Leeds Met some time ago. personal tutoring (839 downloads) .

Great working with you, and thanks for looking after us so well.

Preparing your HEA application

Many colleagues have used our ‘HEA Fellowships-on-one-page’ handout, which is best printed out A3 in colour when working on your applications for Associate Fellowship, Fellowship, Senior Fellowship and Principal Fellowship.

Sally and I have now revised the grid to incorporate updates from the HEA, and would recommend that you use this version rather than the earlier versions. grid-2015-w.docx (2811 downloads) Note that the ‘2015’ column is current information from the HEA website, which supersedes the job descriptions still present in the 2011 UKPSF document.

We are also pleased to provide the main slides UKPSF-recognition-slides-2015-w.pptx (2404 downloads) we currently use at workshops assisting people to draft their applications, with slides with black headings drawing from resources from the HEA, and those with purple headings consisting of our own thoughts and some we’ve gathered from other sources.

We are happy for both these downloads to be used as Open Educational Resources (Phil Race and Sally Brown)

UWE: workshop on SFHEA and PFHEA: 14th January 2015

Here are the main slides I used, and some I did not use, relating to applying to the HEA online for the ‘experience’ route towards Senior and Principal Fellowships. The slides are password-protected, using the word you suggested. UWE 14th January (845 downloads) The slides were devised using materials from the HEA website, and from other things we gathered from a number of sources. We haven’t yet made it clear which are our advice and which are ‘official’, but when we’ve finished putting together a working set of slides, we’ll both publish it on our websites.

You were a great group to work with, and well done for completing significant elements of your respective applications. The sooner you finish off the task, the better it will be (while you still recall all the discussions we had). I wish you all the best for now pressing on to get your award – you’re fortunate in the institutional support you have (not least the fee).

Central College Nottingham: 5th January

Here are the main slides I used, minus the pictures and links, and not always in the order in which I used them Central College Nottingham (660 downloads) . I’ve inserted the QAA B6 slides too. Here also is the great 2004 paper by Geoff Scott on institutional change Geoff Scott's Paper (489 downloads) . I’ve also added a paper on ‘Getting Students Engaged’ Getting Students Engaged paper (667 downloads) .

Please use the ‘search’ function at the right hand side of the website using ‘joughin’ to get to Gordon Joughin’s booklet about oral assessment, and ‘NUS’ to get to their benchmarking tool for assessment and feedback, and ‘observation’ to get to my peer observation booklet. Thanks to Simon for lift to the station, where I just caught a train to Chesterfield then onward to Newcastle. You were a great group to work with – hope to see you again.

Making small-group teaching work

Small-group learning is really important for students, but often gets eclipsed in the literature by the more ‘public’ aspect of large-group lectures. I’ve written lots about both, in the ‘Lecturer’s Toolkit’ (2006 and 2015) and in ‘Making Learning Happen’ (2014). I often use Chapter 4 of the Toolkit as a handout in my workshops on small-group learning, and this particular chapter remains largely unchanged in the 2015 edition, so I am putting the Chapter up as a download here small-group-handout-toolkit.docx (3551 downloads) , not least as a response to Twitter requests for help regarding small-group teaching. I hope you find it useful.

University of Durham: 10th December

Here are the main slides I used in our two workshops today, and the checklist for students to indicate how they use learning outcomes.   Learning outcomes Durham (728 downloads)   Towards assessment as learning (674 downloads) Learning outcomes checklist (780 downloads) You were a great group to work with, thanks for making me so welcome. Thanks specially to Sam for picking me up and delivering me back to Durham station – where I walked straight onto the train bearing Sally back from London.