Collaborative Evaluation for Learning

Colston SangerBCIM Faculty T&L FellowLondon South Bank University

sangerc@lsbu.ac.uk

Why I started this

• 2006-7, co-teaching on two MBA units, Managing Projects and Consulting Skills

• Disappointing quality of some student assignments– Despite encouragement to get feedback on early drafts– Misgivings regarding the originality of particular assignments

• So …– Looking for ways of increasing individual engagement and

hence achievement for students

The project

• Collaborative Evaluation for Learning

– ‘To investigate practical, scalable means of providing continual self, peer and tutor collaborative evaluation in ways that promote student engagement – in a context of constructive alignment of individual learning agreements, intended learning outcomes and, where possible, work-based live assignments within two MBA units.’

Why ‘collaborative evaluation’ and not simply ‘assessment’?• ‘Because I want to focus not so much on the

assessment of the tangible artefacts of learning, but on the development (as evidenced by their in-class interactions) of students’ awareness and critical judgement of multi-party or multi-stakeholder perspectives, particularly where criteria may be more emergent than given.

• This is a critical aspect of study at postgraduate level; it is also a key skill in managing projects.’

‘Constructive alignment’?• ( Biggs, R (1999), Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Buckingham:

SRHE and Open University Press )

• ‘At the root of ‘constructive alignment’ (Biggs, 1999) is the question: “How do I improve my practice …?”

• I understand constructive alignment to be an iterative, incremental process of alignment and refinement of intended learning outcomes, learning activities and evaluation.

• As such, it too is applicable, at least in part, to the management of innovation or change projects in today’s more fluid organisational context, where the process of managing the project is also an iterative, incremental process of learning what is required and what can be achieved.’

What I did

• Learning agreement• In-class group activity – self and peer assessment• Self-assessment of individual assignment

• Subsequently, adapted for a Research Methods unit and a Residential

• Has fed into the design of a new core MBA unit, Critical Management Inquiry

Examples – learning agreementM-111 Managing Projects

• What particularly do you want to gain from this unit?

• How do you propose to go about it?

• What work-based or other live project do you have in mind for your individual assignment? - please describe it briefly

• What additional help or resources might you need? – e.g, what support or additional resources can you call upon at work?

• How will you know when you’re done? – e.g., what are your success criteria?

• Then what?

MCS-M-155 Research Methods

• What is your concern? What is your research question? What is it you want to change or improve?

• What could you do to improve or change things? How do you propose to go about it?

• Why is it important to you? To your organisation?

• How will you know that you have been successful? How will you know that things have changed or improved? How will you evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts?

• What additional help or resources might you need along the way?

Examples – group activity, self and peer assessment

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Examples – work-based project, self-assessment

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Results so far• Up-front effort to build a learning community has

been of value

• Has been taken seriously

• Calibrating the process

• Developing reflective critical thinking skills directly through assessment

Questions, discussion

• What did you or I learn that if we don’t discuss, we might forget?

• What still puzzles us?