Once I had started to bring those competency gaps into my conscious awareness and go about bridging them I was able to turn to the shadowy fears and assumptions that were looming.
I realised that by looking my gaps straight in the eye, much of the fear enveloping them had dissipated. It was only now that I had done my work did I feel confident to support students to do their work.
Now what? Starting where the Students are at (Freire 1972)
In preparation for our first online discussion forum in week 3, I prepared a silent debate on a hinge point question around what Community Development actually was. The activity demonstrated to me that my assumption that students had grasped this concept was erroneous. Not only had they not grasped the concept but they struggled with key critical thinking and linking practice to theory competencies. I realised that I needed to re-work the whole constructive alignment triangle of teaching and learning because not only had they not grasped the concepts but they did not have the tools required to grasp those concepts. I realised that I needed to break down what these competencies were with the students and examine why they were important, how to use them and how to hone them. We then needed to practice using a critical lens when looking at any concept and build students’ confidence in using these competencies over a series of assessed pieces. We had 11 weeks left to do this piece of work.
Lap Two: What? Treating Chickenpox with a Plaster.
I had originally planned to make my feedback practice more student-centred and participative, however, I realised that I could not make changes to my feedback practice when the assessment practice of the module remained antiquated and intact. This would be like dealing with the symptom of the problem and would never go to the root of the issue unless I also revolutionised our assessment practice.
So what? Will Flowers Bloom from Stone?
How could I even attempt to create a more dynamic, participative channel of feedback communication when the assessment was set in stone? How could I expect any new thinking or new approaches to learning to blossom when they were effectively planted in concrete? I realised that we needed to critically reflect on the assessment framework of our module and make changes to how we approached assessment as well as feedback. I thus realised that assessment and feedback are two different faces of the same mountain. And this was some mountain we had to climb….
Flowers bloming from stone in the Burren Co. Clare
Now what? Developing Assessment Literacy
Over the first weeks of the semester, the students and I engaged in a critical appraisal of our assessment. We broke down each of the assessment elements for the module (final essay and 5 online discussion forums). I asked the students if they felt the weighting was fair for each of the elements and they said they did. We looked at the topics for each of the online discussion forums and students had an input as to whether they wanted to add or remove any topics. If they wanted to make a recommendation for a change, they gave reasons which were debated in class and negotiated by students and lecturer. As part of covering each topic, we looked at the proposed title of the online discussion forums corresponding to that particular topic and had discussions around whether students wanted to re-word or re-write it. This activity, in time, I realised was also a flipped feedback exercise because it was clarifying what was expected in the assessment piece.
Using literature on criteria rubrics for online discussion forums, we co-created our own criteria rubric to cover the expectations of each assessment element and we created a ‘rules of engagement’ document for the online discussion forums (Penn State Learning Community Hub and Connor at Colorado State University). This way of working, using dialogue as a basis for developing assessment literacy, appeared to be working (Freire 1972). So I thought it would be a good approach to take in developing feedback literacy too.