Assessing the learning process

Research suggests that assessment is a key motivator of students’ learning and that summative feedback has limited impact on student learning (see 3.5.2). Most BEP instructors said they were constantly thinking about how to change various aspects of assessment in their courses, but felt constrained by workloads and lacked time to implement such change. For example, one instructor said she spent too much time giving feedback, and wanted to find alternative ways to provide feedback more effectively so students would take notice of it. More than one instructor commented on looking at ways to get the students to read more.

As part of the interviews, instructors were provided with a list of activities that focus on the research, writing and learning process (learner-focused, process- focused, collaborative, and reflective tasks) and asked if they have used these kinds of activities in their courses.

• Peer-review

There was a mixed response to the usefulness of peer review. The main concern was over students’ ability to review each other (especially at first and second-year), and the advantages and disadvantages for the strong and weak students in the class. One instructor stated that with peer-review, “you usually end up with two misinformed students” rather than adding any value. Informal peer review with friends often resulted in the same mistakes appearing in more than one student’s assignment. Another instructor who had trialled peer review previously felt students didn’t engage fully with the peer-review process, so it was not usually successful.

• Reflective learning opportunities

All instructors said reflection is an important aspect of being a professional Planning practitioner. For most instructors, reflection related to engagement with, and critical thinking about, the content in order to complete the assessment. They believed they could see critical reflection in an excellent essay. There was also some reflection on roles in group work as part of assessing peer contributions. Even though all instructors indicated reflection was an important aspect of critical thinking and learning, there was no explicit requirement for reflection on the learning process (i.e. what students discover about themselves as learners during the assessment task completion) built into the curriculum and assessment of the courses. Interestingly, most instructors asked students to give them feedback so that they could improve their teaching and course design, but didn’t ask students to explicitly reflect on their own learning.

• Portfolios

Portfolio assessments were not popular due to the extensive marking workload they create. Some instructors had used them successfully in the past, and said they would be useful if there was time to develop and assess them. There was also a concern over students leaving tasks until the last minute and not gaining benefits from the process-focus of portfolio assessments. For others, portfolios were not an appropriate assessment type for the courses they were teaching.

• Annotated bibliographies

An annotated bibliography was required for the capstone projects because it was important for students to demonstrate they were finding appropriate sources for the high-stakes assessment. However, they were not seen as important at the earlier stages of the degree because a reference list was seen as a sufficient indicator of source use, and instructors didn’t want to overload students with unnecessary assessment.

• In-class discussion of readings

There was variation on how assigned readings were used in class. Student-led discussion seemed to be the preferred option for in-class discussion of readings. One instructor teaching at third and fourth year asked students to present readings and assessed them on written reviews of each reading. However, another instructor questioned whether first and second-year students have the capacity to evaluate readings, especially journal articles, as they lack experience and knowledge to make meaningful judgments. Larger class sizes at first year also made in-class discussions challenging as instructors felt they could not monitor all the discussions effectively. Previous attempts at in-class discussions of readings were impeded by students not reading the required texts, and instructors were reluctant to “waste time” on this.

• In-class writing

In-class writing was limited to taking notes in discussion groups to feed back to the class. The activities that required writing were more focused on recording content than on improving writing. One barrier to spending time on in-class writing was that it was perceived as time-consuming, and instructors already struggled to cover all the content in 12 weeks.

• Draft-feedback

Ideally, the instructors would have liked to engage with draft-feedback, but they said it was difficult due to time and workload constraints. One instructor said that it took “too much energy to mark things twice, when the second submission is usually no better than the first”. Most of the instructors said they preferred to encourage students to come and discuss their work, but indicated it was usually the stronger students who sought clarification, rather than the weaker students who actually needed the support.

• Checklists

A generic essay and report checklist is provided in the BEP programme information booklet, and most instructors felt assignment instructions and assessment criteria were clear and could act as checklists. One instructor

viewed checklists as restrictive and “a lazy way through, where students can just tick off bits, rather than fundamentally knowing what they are supposed to do”. He said he would be more likely to encourage a self-developed checklist, because the structure can vary, so developing logic within the task requirements is more important

Overall, there was limited use of process-focused learning activities. While some instructors said they would like to focus more on the research and writing process, they felt students wouldn’t do extra activities without extrinsic reward and were concerned about how to create space for them to be assessed. One instructor was concerned that “spending too much time on the writing process in class would leave room for nothing else”.