Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN A Powerful Learning Environment Professor David Lines The Robert Gordon University

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN Two Cultures of Assessment Assessment of Education Assessment for Education The first has ‘crowded out’ the second

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN The Void theory – Instructional Approach The student’s brain is an empty vessel into which facts can be poured. Result: Encourages superficial (rote) learning; Regurgitation of ‘facts’; Lazy teaching?

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN Constructivism Essentially (but not uncontroversially) learner has to make his or her own sense of the information supplied. Teacher supplies ‘scaffold’ for learning i.e. provides support on which learning rests, rather than the learning itself (which the student has to construct internally).

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN Scaffolding Teacher has to build in Gardner’s notion of multiple intelligences, Ebbinghaus’ ‘curve of forgetting’, Tony Buzan’s mind maps, Sh Ö n etc in building the scaffold, hence: Case studies, role-plays, memory games and so on. Thus, learning (and the learner) becomes ‘active’.

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN Active Learning Drefus (1986) described a pattern. We: Observe (parents, peers, teachers employers); Copy (but mediated by our personal experiences); Use heuristics (rules of thumb); Use intuition and pattern recognition, until As experts we develop short-cuts.

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN Assessment & Active Learning The teacher becomes more a mentor or critical friend and given this change in the teaching and learning environment, the assessment regime must change as well. Learners must ‘self-discover’ in a ‘safe’ environment (i.e. where mistakes are accepted) and assessment must provide ‘feed-forward’.

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN From Testing to Assessment Assessment must shift from pass/fail notions, from high-stakes to low(er), from end-of course, from summative to formative; in other words, from testing to (true) assessment.

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN Constructive alignment Unless assessment changes in this way all else will fail: Dochy (2001) describes the ‘Backwash effect’ – the educational equivalent of Gresham’s Law.

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN A Powerful Learning Environment (Direick & Dochy, 2001) 1.Teaching, learning and assessment are carefully aligned; 2.The student is an integral part of the process; 3.Both the outcomes and the process of achieving them are assessed; 4.The assessment process uses a variety of approaches, including real-life scenarios that require decisions to be made;

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN A Powerful Learning Environment 5. Evidence for success is presented in a portfolio – a shift from quantification to a portrayal (Birenbaum, 1996; Palomba & Banta, 1999). Possibly not time constrained; 6. The process of learning involves tasks that engage the student, are meaningful, challenging and ‘authentic’; 7. A reflective diary is maintained by the student and is central to the learning process.

Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching THE ROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY ABERDEEN Pie in the Sky? What are the alternatives: Throwing books off the bridge? or Shifting the paradigm?