PROJECT ASSESSMENT AS AN INTEGRATED PART OF THE LEARNING PROCESS IN THE PROBLEMBASED AND PROJECTORIENTED STUDY AT AALBORG UNIVERSITY Assistant lecturer Søren Hansen, Aalborg University

Luhmann’s operative constructivism The Psychologically system 1 Psychologically System Feedback: Thoughts and feelings Outside world E.g. the student or the supervisor The system constructs it’s own version of the outside world The complexity of the outside world is reduced by increasing the systems own complexity

Luhmann’s operative constructivism The Psychologically system 2 Psychologically System Feedback: Thoughts and feelings Outside world The complexity of the outside world is reduced by making decisions. Making decisions implies knowledge about distinctions in the outside world. Knowledge is the ability to make distinctions.

Luhmann’s operative constructivism The Social system Social System Feedback: Communication Outside world E.g. the student and the supervisor discussing the students project

Luhmann’s operative constructivism Communication Psychologically System Feedback: Thoughts and feelings Social System Psychologically System Feedback: Thoughts and feelings Feedback: Communication Observable The question is what kind of communication is the most helpful when the psychological systems want to understand each other ?

Schön’s reflection - in - action 1 Use exemplars to create redundancy in the communication. The supervisor shifts between telling and demonstrating - The student between listening and imitating. The supervisor must be an expert for the student to imitate in a reflective manner.

Schön’s reflection - in - action 2 Reflection - in - action involves on - the - spot experiments. On - the - spot experiments can be “move testing”. The student must learn “reflection - in - action” as a way of solving problems as well as a way of communicate.

Characteristics of the dialog between the supervisor and the student It must be redundant (E.g. by use us exemplars). It must be reflective. It must be based on confidence between the supervisor and the student. It must be based on the students inquiry - not the supervisors. The supervisor must be an expert the student can imitate reflectively.

The dialog during the project period Double contingent communication Supervisor Student Time Contingence Learning objectives

Consequences for the project evaluation design Supervision is a communicative process with the aim to reduce the contingence in the communications Evaluation is an ongoing process throughout the project period (where did we come from ? And Where are we going ?) The project evaluation can not be distinguished from supervision and should be treated as a normal meeting between the supervisor and the student Marking must be based on the students ability to participate in the social system (by raising good questions and discussing their answer) The external examiner will have a hard time following the discussions

An example from a case study at Aalborg University During the project period the students work on a paper called “Dynamic learning objectives” where they list the questions they are working on The students submit their project report After that they prepare a presentation based on their dynamic learning objectives The project evaluation is carried out as a discussion of the project taking the students questions as a starting point

Results from the case study The students reflections are improved. The responsibility for the study are experienced as mutual between the supervisor and the student. The students learning process is put into focus by concentrating the inquiry on the students own questions. Assessment is an ongoing process during the semester. The students are marked with respect to the quality of the questions they want to discuss together with their ability to discuss them. Both the supervisor and the external examiner have to get used to this way of assessing students. (They lose control of the situation). Reflection is a time consuming activity.