Assessment come Curriculum Map

Today in the planning day come workshop thingie we talked through, about, around, down, in, out, and up assessment and learning. This is what has come out in the wash:

Starting backwards. Semester two is straightforward, some hurdle tasks in the lab would be useful to keep students on track, measure progress and milestones, and provide support, scaffolding, but the key outcome of all subjects in semester two is the honours research outcome which will be examined. This provides all the assessment tasks and outcomes for the semester.

The assessment tasks for semester one have been planned from the point of view of aligning them towards maximising the research done in honours, and the quality of the honours research outcomes (the theses and projects undertaken). Each of the assessable tasks are designed to be formative in terms of the final honours outcome, with one caveat at this point being the media futures subject which is a theoretical island within the program.

Semester one has four subjects, the research practice subject has no timetabled teaching and is an allocation of time (measured by credit points) for students to be doing the research work that honours requires. As mentioned, the media futures subject will have two essays as outcomes, but these are not part of the formative model for the rest of the assessment at this point.

The research strategies subject will see students develop a research problem/statement in the early weeks. This will be a hurdle task, it will not be assessed, but must be completed. It will change during the course of the semester and the year, but is important to develop a trajectory to everything else that is going on. Here they will also learn some basic project management, and by the end of the semester will have also identified/signed on with a supervisor. The project management, supervision documentation and a project plan (timeline) for semester two will form a hurdle portfolio task. The two assessable tasks for the research strategies subject will be a 2000 word written piece due mid semester. This will be a preliminary investigation of what the key methods are for the individual research problem, who are the key figures in the field, what do they say, and how do you actually do/use these methods (what are they exactly?). This is assessed, and based on the feedback you get will form the basis for a larger, expanded writing task (4000 words) that writes out in much more complexity and detail your method/s, the key figures, theories and ideas, what they are, and how they are used (and perhaps why). This can also be used as the basis for the opening chapter of the thesis or the exegesis.

The first semester research lab is orientated around learning a lot about the theme or topic of the lab. A suggested model for the content is to use a tripartite structure that spends a third defining ‘boundaries, edges and tipping points’. What are the definitional terms and debates, what are the edges and boundaries of the problem (where does it begin, when does it become something else) and at what point, or where ‘in between’ do things change? A third examining why this topic actually matters (what are its ethical implications, what relation does this have to other things?), and a final third investigating how the theme intersects with the students’ individual discipline, field or practice.

For example, in non fiction the first third might think about where does non fiction as a concept have purchase (writing, film making, video, art, journalism, but what about in design? advertising? gaming?), and within these about what point or moment does nonfiction become fiction or whatever the oppositional other is to nonfiction? The second third examining the import of non fiction in terms of an ethics of practice (who gets to speak? why? how?), why does it even matter to distinguish things that make nonfiction truth claims from fictional truth claims, how non fiction can non fiction be? And a final third thinking about these questions in the context of my own discipline and field – which is where I can bring in my research problem and concerns to provide a lens to focus this theme.

For assessment we want to assess what has been learnt about the theme, but in a manner that is relevant to the disciplinary mix and the larger research projects being undertaken. We also want the emphasis and effort here being on doing a lot of reading, watching, listening, trying to be a sponge with the assessment not detracting from the effort to learn as much as you can. The first task will be a highly constrained presentation (let’s say 3 minutes long) where you must express a point of view about the lab theme from the point of view of your research problem/field/discipline/practice. You are to argue for your opinion (but not just opinion since it should be informed by your emerging understanding of the topic area) using evidence from what you have learnt. This will happen mid semester. The presentations will be critiqued by the lab, and assessed. The second task will be to develop this point of view further, to turn it into a substantial argument that again takes a position in relation to the lab topic and your research problem/practice/discipline/field. This work can take any form that is relevant to your practice/discipline but if it is not an essay but is some other sort of artefact then it must have a written accompaniment.

Things to consider. Semester two labs, what should a lab leave behind? why? how?

Threading

How to thread things between the labs amongst the students (courtesy of Rachel):

The Lab Themes

The big outcome today are the lab themes. The themes are set, the description still in draft mode.

(insert drumroll)The Themes(/remove drumroll)

Advocacy Lab
The Advocacy Lab provides an opportunity for you to engage with real world problems in the context of community engagement and social issues. You will work in interdisciplinary teams to investigate problems and issues which matter to communities. The lab is an opportunity to facilitate your engagement with sustainable and responsible practice in the communication and media industries.

Critical and creative thinking will be used to enhance your disciplinary knowledge. This course offers you a deep level of engagement with social problems; you may work with community groups, not-for-profit organizations, or industry on real-world problems.

This is a lab where you are able to use your media and communication abilities to transform your, and others, understanding of ethical questions to empower and make a difference.

Slow Lab
The Slow Lab provides an opportunity for you to undertake speculative research and making around the concept of the ‘slow’. You will work in interdisciplinary teams to define, sketch, elaborate upon, unpack and describe how the recent idea of the ‘slow’ may be relevant to media and communication in terms of theory and practice.

This concept of the slow has arisen in reaction to the increased velocity and intensification of contemporary media, communication, manufacturing and consumption. It is concerned with sustainability and the romantic restoration of the ‘human’ within what some characterise as the ‘in’ or ‘posthuman’ of a contemporary knowledge society. You will interrogate the concept of slowness in this lab.

This is a lab where the slow movement will be appropriated to think about slow media, slow technology, and slow communication. You will use your media and communication abilities to consider the role and relevance of the slow in relation to a problem of your choice.

UnFiction Lab
The UnFiction Lab provides a space to investigate, critique and undertake studies in non fiction theory, practice and form. You will work in interdisciplinary teams to deepen your understanding of key issues in factual, documentary and nonfiction research. These issues may include the relation of fiction to nonfiction, the place of creativity and invention in nonfiction, the ethics of documentary, and asks where nonfiction occurs and why.

What is an Honours Lab?

Thanks to Russell Kerr:

What is an Honours Research Lab?
A Research Lab is a transformative space that facilitates dynamic work through the relations between the diverse individuals involved; these interactions produce innovative and creative solutions to key problems in media and communication.

The Research Lab can be thought of as being a creative studio space; part design studio; part kindergarten; part conversation; part laboratory. As a participant of a Research Lab you can expect to give a voice to an identified issue or theme, you will collaborate with team members in a participatory experience, and you will produce research outcomes of relevance to your future career.

You can expect an intensive collaborative environment that expands your understanding of a given subject. You will employ a range of complex skills and research activities to create new solutions in response to a research problem.

Outcomes of the Research Lab will be as diverse as the participants’ skillsets and experiences, they will be interdisciplinary. Your outcomes will be relevant to the research problem and be appropriate to your personal understanding and exploration of the issue or theme you have engaged with. The outcome you create may be different from your own disciplinary practice.

Honours encourages you to approach media and communication research as a disruptive, informed and transformational practice. The laboratory, from the point of view of your disciplinary experience and learning, will be seriously playful, liminal and enabling.

Outline of What a Lab Theme Needs to Do

Some guidelines (chime in for what I’ve missed here please)

1. They cannot be discipline specific
2. They do need to be broad enough to offer content/engagement for all current programs (draw a line from creative writing, through comm design, on to all the b.comm programs, and on to games, music, animation, photography…)
3. They need to be relevant to the School
4. We can innovate – lead – agenda set
5. They need to be ‘teachable’ (there needs to be honours appropriate content to be taught)
6. They need to support a diversity of research outcomes (thesis, project, project via portfolio)
7. Hopefully they have some ‘cool’ quality so that students ‘get’ why doing that topic would be, well, cool

Less specific:

1. Let’s think innovative stuff.
2. Let’s think forward looking (honours knowledge as enabling future knowledge practitioners)
3. Let’s think about what honours should be known for and why

Some Possible Lab Themes

These have been sent through by Yoko:

Studio themes for discussion

1. What community?
Description: students explore what notions of a community they belong to, or are associated with through their research

Is it a community of interest or community of practice, or a community of place? I like the idea that students can explore what and how they are connected to eg. through their discipline, through their peers, through their interests, through their geographical locations, etc. Through their individual research, they can explore this connection more deeply and identify elements that make up differences, connection, fragmentation and agency (eg. Latour) within those notions of community, in relation to their topic or project site.

NB: This could also be called ‘what culture?’ too, and explore the same kinda thing.

2. Lost in translation
Description: students explore the things that are hard to make tangible, which can either be within their practice/discipline/project site.

One of the interesting thing about working in an interdisciplinary way is how things becomes ‘lost in translation’ – sometimes, this is an obstacle, and sometimes this can force a level of ambiguity that catalyse a productive and generative activity. Students can investigate facets of tacit knowledge, embedded practices, ambiguous language, complexity and productive tension that arise from operating in the spaces of ‘in-between’.

3. What does it mean to be good?
Description: students explore what it means to be ethical in any chosen field, practice and context. I’ve kinda imagined that this cluster can critically interrogate a variety of pressing issues of our time and include stuff like sustainability, social responsibility, education … etc. It will be good to investigate how ethics manifest in different areas and what values are promoted in the media and communication outputs out there. It could potentially be quite deep but can also be explored as a way to question approaches, conducts and outputs.

Student as Producer

University of Lincoln’s “Student as Producer” project, while aimed at undergraduate, is useful in terms of its effort to connect research with pedagogy, which is one of the key aims of what is now BH066, Bachelor of Media and Communication (Honours). Wonder why they didn’t name their project ‘student as researcher’?

Useful URLs for January 28th through March 12th

These are my links for January 28th through March 12th:

• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• Better designs that lead to better learning | theage.com.au – Nice article about relationship between architecture, learning, and the role of small groups in learning.
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error

Meeting Notes 02-11 (March 1 2011)

Here: Adrian Miles, Cathy Greenfield, Yoko Akama
Apologies: Karen Trist, Karli Lukas

Update: revised academic package has been returned to College, so we are waiting for what’s next. Arranging a meeting to get a bit more information about the Comm Des honours proposal, partly for clarification and partly to get a better sense of what the imagined relation to the M.Comm honours is.

Today: last session we built a map of the outcomes for the research strategies subject. We now want to:

1. define assessment outcomes
2. develop an assessment matrix
3. define assessment timelines
4. develop and describe a learning roadmap for the subject

Excellent discussion about the strategies subject. It will begin from a constellation of questions:

• what is your discipline?
• what counts as a proposition in your discipline?
• what is a discipline?
• what counts as (professional) knowledge in your field?
• what is knowledge?
• what is the difference between information, data, knowledge?

Around or arising from this are a cluster of related questions and problems. We discussed the ‘roadmap’ of the subject as like a guide, where there are, say, three key things to be seen, but how you get to them will vary, but you really need to see these three things. So, the assessment is a way to focus this stroll so that students are to make a response to:

• what questions matter?
• how do you do research?
• what do you do as a researcher?
• how is it done?
• how is it presented?
• what methods are used?
• why does this matter?

A version of this of around 2000 words will be assessed half way through semester. Critiqued/assessed and then further developed and submitted at the end where it will be between 4 and 5000 words. These are the only assessment tasks, they are iterative, and a mix of formative and summative. It is also to build the ‘bedrock’ for their second semester research task.

A research proposition, which is also an outcome of this, will be assessed by the honours committee, but will be ‘attached’ to the research subject as a hurdle assessment, come satisfactory progress requirement.

In addition we talked about ways (and the value of) an ongoing mapping come visualisation task in the workshop that maps the different discsiplines/fields/methods being used, where you place yourself, as a way of making visible respective research specificities and differences. This would be a key outcome of the strategies workshop, not assessed, but useful in showing what has been done, where we’ve been, and will inform their responding to the main assessment task. The aim is to start broad, and spend the semester focussing ti down.

Meeting Notes, 01 -11 (February 14 2011)

Present: Yoko Akama, Cathy Greenfield, Jeremy Parker, Karen Trist.

Update: Part As and program guides approved subject to some amendments, which Adrian is doing.
Communication Design has been tasked with developing an individual honours program, discussion about this and relation to Media and Communication honours is ongoing.

Old stuff: Have confirmed that the Part Bs of the course guides (where you pretty much specifically indicate what is being done in the subject) do not have a formal approval process. Have not been given any information about how the process of staffing and teaching the program will proceed.

We talked about developing and designing the entire curriculum, on a subject by subject basis. The first one we started with was the strategies come methods subject. We sent the day doing the first step, which was to make a list of the things we could think of that students might want or need to learn doing the subject. Each thing was stuck on to a chart, where I later moved the items into thematic/cognate groups.

Reading vertically, from left to right, headings are mine:

technical
does it need to cover how to write?
what ‘technical writing’ stuff is needed?
styleguide?
presmises of academic writing
library session

stuff
what stuff will you be working with? How?
where is this stuff?
what do you need to know to do this?

epistemologies of research
what is knowledge?
what is your discipline?
what counts as a proposition in your discipline?
what is a discipline?
what counts as professional knowledge in your field?
what is the difference between knowledge, information, data?

tacit knowing and research
what constitutes/counts as research?
what is a research question/problem?
what form does evidence take in your discipline?
what does a research answer look like?
what is an argument?

ethics
what are the ethics of research?
ethics – an ethical reflection of you to your research, your research persona as ethics, things you should do, not just things not to do

currently miscellaneous
how does this relate to the labs?
systems of reason
hierachies of knowledge
qualitative versus quantitative
specific methods or practice modules (interviewing, surveys), in lectures, workshops?

Next: from this map move to how students might learn these things, activities, methods, models. And then what learning outcomes these are, and what assessment artefacts are relevant and useful.