Design Patterns for Assessment as Change Agents

Artefacts  and  the  Vernacular  Crea%ng  and  sharing  learning  designs  is  not  something  teachers  rou%nely  do.  Artefacts  (objects.  part  designs,  drawings,  stories  etc.)  are  important  for  sharing  knowledge  –  E%enne  Wenger  calls  them  ‘Boundary  Objects’      Don  Norman  explains  this  important  phenomenon  as  follows      “A  major  argument  [in  this  book]   is   that  much  of  our  everyday  knowledge  resides   in  the  world,  not   in  the  head.  This   is  an   interes%ng  argument  and,   for  cogni%ve  psychologists,  a  difficult  one.  What  could  it  possibly  mean  for  knowledge  to  be  situated  in  the  world?  Knowledge  is  interpreted,  the  stuff  that  can  only  be  in  minds.  Informa%on,  yes,  that  could  be  in  the  world,  but  knowledge,  never.   Well,   yeah,   the   dis%nc%on   between   knowledge   and   informa%on   is   not   clear.   If   we   are  sloppy  with  terms,  then  perhaps  you  can  see  the  issues  beSer.  People  certainly  do  rely  upon  the  placement   and   loca%on   of   objects,   upon  wriSen   texts,   upon   the   informa%on   contained  within  other  people,  upon  the  artefacts  of  society,  and  upon  the  informa%on  transmiSed  within  and  by  a  culture.”  

Don  Norman,  The  Design  of  Everyday  Things    

OD4L  (Open  Design  for  Learning)    Open  Design  PaSerns  for  Assessment  as  Change  Agents.  

John  Casey  City  of  Glasgow  College  The  CIT-­‐eA  Project  

Summary  This  poster  proposes  the  approach  of  ‘reverse  engineering’  exis%ng  courses  through  adop%ng  e-­‐assessment  techniques  and  iden%fies  some  of  the  cri%cal  factors  affec%ng  this  process.      

Ra>onale:  Suppor>ng  ‘BoBom  Up’  Research  by  Teachers  

“Ideally,  teachers…should  have  the  means  to  act  like  design  researchers  themselves,  i.e.  documen%ng  and  sharing  their  designs.  Without  this  they  remain  the  recipients  of  research  findings,  rather  than  being  the  drivers  of  new  knowledge  about  teaching  and  learning,  able  to  cri%que  and  challenge  the  technology  that  is  changing  their  profession”  -­‐  Diana  Laurillard,  Teaching  as  a  Design  Science  

Crea>ng  and  Sharing  Learning  Designs  is  a  Tricky  Problem!  

Targe>ng  Assessment  Assessment  is  the  ‘sharp  end’  of  tradi%onal  educa%on  systems  –  change  here  travels  back  through  the  en%re  system  –  a  kind  of  reverse  engineering.  Our  approach  is  influence  by  the  Spiral  Model  of  so`ware  development  

Theore>cal  &  Methodological  Tools    •  Conversa%onal  Framework    -­‐  Diana  Laurillard  •  3  Types  of  Teaching    -­‐  Paul  Ramsden  •  Construc%ve  Alignment  -­‐  John  Biggs’  •  Pedagogical  Framework  and  Organisa%onal  Context  –  Peter  Goodyear  •  Systems  Theory    -­‐  Peter  Senge  •  Instruc%onal  Design  –  Reigeluth  &  Clark    •  Cogni%ve  Science,  Design  and  Usability  -­‐  Don  Norman  •  Design  Theory  and  Prac%ce  -­‐  Achille  Cas%glioni  •  Socio-­‐Cogni%ve  Engineering  –  Mike  Sharples  •  The  3E  Framework  Keith  Smyth  and  Terry  Mayes  •  Spiral  Model  of  So`ware  Development  Barry  Boehm  •  Par%cipatory  Design  –  Ezio  Manzini  and  Pelle  Ehn  

Dodging  the  Educa>on  Police  -­‐  Theore>cal  Contradic>ons  “[Effec%ve]    teachers’  ra%onales  o`en  bear  a  striking  resemblance  to  well  established  theory  and  their  conclusions  to  well  researched  empirical  findings.        Its   seems   likely   that   their   long   journey   towards  enlightenment  might  have  been  a   lot   shorter   if  they  had  bothered  to  read  something  [!]      [But]  A  good  deal  of  educa%onal   literature  is  dull,   impenetrable  or  useless  –  or  even  all  three  at  the  same  %me.  Only  a  small  propor%on  of  educa%onal   ideas  are   ‘powerful’   in  that  they  embody  what   I   call   ‘pedagogic   leverage’   –   if   you   act   on   them   then   something   different   and  worthwhile  happens.  Much  educa%onal   theory  seems   impossible  even  to  act  on,   let  alone   likely   to  produce  worthwhile  improvements.”      

From  #53ideas:  The  most  useful  training  of  university  teachers  does  not  involve  ‘training’  by  Graham  Gibbs  

Higher  Educa>on  and  the  Knowledge  Economy  –  Running  Out  of  Road?  The  ‘knowledge  economy’  concept  is  a  central  part  of  neo-­‐liberal  ideology  that  has  underpinned  an  expanding  Higher  Educa%on  system:    “the   idea   of   the   knowledge   economy‘   has   shaped   educa%on   policy   in   the   UK   and   around   the  world…this  vision,  may  be  increasingly  hard  to  realise…highly  rewarded,  crea%ve  and  autonomous  work  is  likely  to  be  restricted  over  the  coming  two  decades  to  ever  smaller  global  elites.”  

Keri  Facer  -­‐  Final  Report:  Beyond  Current  Horizons  Programme  2009  

Learning  Design:  A  ‘Wicked’  Design  Problem?  In  design  studies  the  tern  ‘wicked’  is  applied  to  problems  that  are  highly  resistant  to  solu%on  because  of  complex  social  and  technical  interac%ons,  with  incomplete  and  changing  requirements  and  conflic%ng  ideas.    A  possible  solu%on  to  this  is  par%cipatory  or  co-­‐design  methods  (pioneered  in  Scandinavia  and  Italy)  for  dealing  with  intractable  social  problems.  The  DESIS  network  is  an  exponent  of  this  approach  (hSp://www.desis-­‐network.org).  

Culture  Change  –  Drivers  “The  So`  Stuff  is  the  Hard  Stuff”  –  aSributed  to  Roger  Enrico  Vice  Chairman,  Pepsico    Digital  Transgressions  ‘Digital’  can  s%ll  be  deeply  transgressive  –  by  capturing  what  has  been  tradi%onally  invisible  it  acts  as  powerful  reifica%on  agent  that  can  challenge  the  status  quo.    

Pedagogic  Transgressions  Open  Educa%onal  Resources  &  Prac%ces  (OER/P)  are  powerful  change  agents  that  can  challenge  exis%ng  values  and  prac%ces.  They  accord  with  the  values  of  the  democra%c  radicals  of  the  early  19th  century  who  established  public  higher  educa%on  and  held  that  educa%on  should  be  ‘accessible  to  the  public  and  transparent  to  the  public  gaze’.    

Economic  Transgressions  “Our  current  system  of  quality  assurance  in  HE  -­‐  driven  by  marke%sa%on,  standardisa%on,  and  human  resource  management  -­‐  is  measuring  the  wrong  things  and  does  not  value  radical,  inclusive  (or  indeed  any  truly  transforma%ve)  approaches  to  learning”  

Radical  Interven%ons  in  Teaching  and  Learning:    Na%onal  Union  of  Students  

Escaping  e-­‐learning  Deliriums  

•  The  Emperor’s  New  Clothes…  •  Celebrity  experts  •  Neo-­‐liberal  memes  e.g.  

²  Knowledge  Economy  ²  Informa%on  Society  

•  Tech-­‐Centric  solu%ons  for  complex  social  problems  •  Commercial  interests  •  A  ‘gravity  well’  of  social  media  that  is  difficult  to  escape  from  •  Unusable  tools  •  Lack  of  cri%cal  evalua%on  and  reflec%on