Teachers’ views of assessment in HE

Studies into the teachers’ views of assessment in HE is a very complex issue. The main reason for this statement is that there are several aspects intertwined, making it problematic to include students in the assessment process, the importance of which research has underlined whether a deeper understanding of a subject is to be attained.

In an attempt to check that students have understood the content of a course, the teachers resort to traditional testing methods. Part of that is logistics. Large classes in undergraduate courses lead to more traditional testing as a means of assessment. A major reason given by the teachers is also that students need to know about the subject area in more depth before being given responsibility for assessment. Being gradually acculturated and assimilated into the research community in the form of an apprenticeship is part of that process. This is supported by the notion of apprenticeship and assimilation of the subject area of many researchers. Bourdieu called it a game, Kuhn talked about paradigms and Goodyear & Zenios termed it ‘epistemic fluency’. All conform in one way or another to the notion that students need to be ‘taught’ in their subject before being trusted with assessing their work. This seems also to be true when it comes to their understanding of the networked learning environments. An interesting aspect is that the one most experienced with running online courses was also the one most inclined to trying out peer and self assessment as part of his online course, but only after mastering the subject.

The logical progression of this process is unilateral teacher-centred assessment. In order to change this to collaborative student assessment practices, the focus has to change from content to learning processes, in which assessment should be seen as a continuous process. (McConnell, 2006)One factor of this content centred approach is the teachers view that students come to their classes with little experience in the subject being taught or that they have experiences that would actually help in the process of learning.

In order to bring about change, teachers need to be made aware of different ways of conceptualising the content and assessment procedures in networked learning environments and where students knowledge is part of the process. A collaborative student-driven assessment process leads to deeper understanding and should be at the forefront of educational practices in higher education.

A concluding remark is that universities and their raison d'être should focus more on into what kind of culture their educational institutions socialize the teachers and their students, and for what kind of knowledge universities should strive. If universities are delivering learning with the intention of streamlining university education into a European standardised exam format, without taking the underlying theories governing the assessment processes into account, then they will carry on with a behaviouristic approach in designing assessment in their education for the foreseeable future. A way to achieve this could be for the teachers not only be the subject experts but also become more experienced in mentoring in a networked learning environment and learn from the more experienced teachers on how to include students into the whole process of the course design including peer assessment. A constructivist approach, achieving deep learning is only possible when students are fully involved in their own learning.

References
Bourdieu, P. (1990) Homo Academicus. Stanford; Ca: Stanford University Press
Goodyear, P. & Zenios, M. (2007) Discussion, collaborative knowledge work and epistemic fluency. British Journal of Educational Studies, 55, pp.351-368.
Kuhn T. S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press
McConnell, D. (2006) E-Learning Groups and Communities. Maidenhead, SRHE/OU Press

Constantly connected

Students are on-line more and more rather than in lecture halls, particularly those who have grown up with the Internet. They chat, use Wikis, Facebook, Skype or Flickr and Blogs to communicate with each other. They choose to trust sites that have similar information elsewhere and search engines are their first choice for finding relevant information. They have relationships on-line and are constantly in touch with their friends via Twitter. (Lorenzo, Oblinger and Dziuban, 2004, Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005)

”Constantly connected to information and each other, students don't just consume information. They create-and re-create-it. With a do-it-yourself, open source approach to material, students often take existing materials, add their own touches, and republish. Bypassing traditional authority channels, self-publishing-in print, image, video, or audio-is common. Access and exchange of information is nearly instantaneous.” (Lorenzo, Oblinger and Dziuban, 2004)

In Collective Intelligence (1998), Pierre Lévy writes about the theory of the collective intelligence where the net is a network of knowledge and that the Internet has created an alternative way of living with free knowledge formed in cyberspace. He defines collective intelligence as ”a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, co-ordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilisation of skills” (Levy, 1998, p. 13). As most people become wired, the creation of a collective intelligence is constantly created and re-created. Lévy states that his ”hypothesis is that it is both possible and desirable to construct technical, social, and semiotic means that will effectively incarnate and materialise collective intelligence” (ibid, p. 105). Tim O'Reilly, the man who popularised the term web 2.0, argued that in the new web 2.0 the users are the ones who add value to the Internet. Most web 2.0 applications are social and mobile in nature; there is a definite shift from expert-driven content to user-driven, participatory-content production. (O'Reilly, 2005) Software such as Wikipedia, an on-line encyclopaedia where anyone can add, change and start new entries, is a collaborative effort on a massive scale. As content creation without expert approval, this is truly a huge success and Wikipedia is now students' first choice of reference (Lorenzo, Oblinger and Dziuban, 2007, Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005) . Other sites such as del.icio.us and Flickr use a concept called "folksonomy", which is a collaborative categorization of sites, where the users decide on which keywords they want to associate with a particular site. They are also called tags. Tagging allows for multiple, overlapping associations with each person tagging that particular site. Users get suggestions on how others have tagged that site and by searching on tags, users can see what other users have bookmarked. This is a rather less rigid categorisation decided by the user and other users, rather than such search engines as Yahoo which is categorised for the user. (O'Reilly, 2005)

Lévy argues that an ‘attempt to make human groups as conscious as possible of what they are doing together and provide them with practical means of coordination’ (Lévy, 1998, p. 177) will, in a virtual space with collective and smart formations, prosper. He goes on to say that this ”universally distributed intelligence’ will enhance and fuse the collective knowledge, skills, and imagination in all its diversity. By sharing and exchanging knowledge a new form of intelligence is created, the collective intelligence.

From a learning perspective it is interesting to investigate the implications for teaching, learning and assessing that learning, specifically in a university setting. It is important that we conceptualize and investigate the implications for higher education of these new web 2.0 environments in order to avoid the solutions to our learning needs being built on obsolete learning theories, which will not match the problems of understanding new ways in which learning takes place in the web 2.0 environment. Let’s not make the same mistakes over and over again! Time has come for a real change in the way we learn together!

Levy, P. (1998). Collective Intelligence. Cambridge:Perseus Books.

Lorenzo, Oblinger, and Dziuban. (2004). Technology and the way information is created, used, and disseminated have changed, as has the definition of "net savvy" – http://www.educause.edu/eq/archives

Oblinger, D. and Oblinger J. (2005). Educating the Net Generation. Educause http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen

O'Reilly, Tim (2005) What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. Retrieved 2009-07-07 http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html

Networked learners are we all

If we assume that learning is essentially constructive, cumulative, self-regulated, goal-oriented, situated, collaborative, and individually different, as De Corte (1996) assumes, then we have to change perspective from teacher-driven content consumption to student-centred content production, where students in a collaborative environment construct alternative content, created within their own context and in a web 2.0 environment. By using web 2.0 we can harness that learning. This will, in turn, have implications for assessing and learning. As McConnell (2006)has shown, one way to approach the problem is to include students from the beginning of the process. However, the starting point of novice is context dependant. Students are never novices as such; they are only newcomers within the frame of reference of the research community to which they aspire.

"We cannot claim to have sorted out once and for all what students need to be told if they are to make sense of topic X. No matter how much detailed research is done in the way the topic is conceptualised, the solution will not necessarily be found for new ways of putting it across. […] All we can definitely claim is that there are different ways of conceptualising the topic we want to teach. .. all we can definitely conclude is that teachers and students need to be aware that there are such differences and they must have the means to resolve them within the learning situation." (Laurillard 2002, p. 71)

Laurillard’s (2002) talk of fuzziness can be avoided using McConnell’s approach to including students in the whole learning process, including assessing them. Understanding the learning process through hermeneutic interpretation, we can make students and tutors aware of where they are situated. Where they are going would thus be part of the assessment process. Multiple interpretations, as well as harnessing the dialogic, reflective assessment process in which they are situated, thus becomes the starting point of how to understand their co-construction of new knowledge. Heidegger held that we are always part of the world we are trying to understand, and that we are not only epistemological spectators in the world but are also embedded in it. Gadamer maintained that interpretation is a question of understanding the world from the world itself, and not from the writings of others, in conjunction with your own understanding of the world, forming a melting of horizons. (Palmer, 1969) Knowledge changes and has “the dynamic of interpretative reading” (Ricoeur, 1976, p74), which makes the process of collaboration in a co-construction of knowledge extremely powerful as a means of understanding the world. By having an equal voice in the dialogue of what kind of learning and assessment should be used, the collective decides on the means of advancing the content-creation and co-construction of knowledge rather than just copying actions until performed automatically. By using web 2.0, students will, in a collaborative environment, construct alternative content, collaboratively create their own context in a constant dialogue with the past and the present, and create new knowledge. So changing the learning perspective from a teacher-driven content consumption to a student-driven content production, changes the focus from learning in order to becoming a member of a community to being a co-producer of that community.

References
De Corte, E (1996) Instructional Psychology: Overview. In: E. De Corte, & F.E. Weinert (Eds) International encyclopedia of developmental and instructional psychology. (pp. 33-43). Oxford, UK. Elsevier Science Ltd.
Laurillard, D, 2002. Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies, 2nd edition London, Routledge/Falm
McConnell, D. (2006) E-Learning Groups and Communities. Maidenhead, SRHE/OU Press.
Palmer, R. (1969) Hermeneutics. Evanston: Nortwestern University Press
Ricoeur P. (1976). Interpretation theory: discourse and the surplus of meaning. TX, USA: Christian University Press.