March 2023 – Page 2

Learning outcomes and assessment criteria

Reading Alan Davies’ Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem?

At first, I thought that the article may not be relevant to my practice, because as librarians we do not assess students’ work. However, a big part of it deals with outcome-led teaching and learning theory, which I found interesting. The author talks about Bloom’s and Bigg’s taxonomies and I was inspired to read more about both (see the PDF).

Blooms-and-Biggs-taxonomies

Learning about replacing nouns with active verbs when we talk about learning outcomes is especially useful for my practice. Looking into revised Bloom’s taxonomy gave me a deeper understanding of the learning outcomes devised for the UAL Library Services. It was done primarily with the Libraries own offer and
priorities in mind, however, they have been loosely structured under the UAL creative attributes.

I am excited to have this space on the PgCert course to explore them in more depth and make sure that I am using all available tools to improve my teaching.

Library-Creative-Attributes

Another thought by the author made me more aware about the context in which I teach. Davies states that over-specification of the outcomes can be counter-productive in art and design and other creative disciplines. The outcomes in art and design are not achieved just once. Assuming that once addressed they are completed would not reflect the pedagogy of the discipline that is constantly evolving.

When I teach about Harvard referencing standards there is not much room for not being specific. However, when teaching with objects, I can support students in creative learning by keeping in mind the disciplines that are taught at UAL and their evolving nature.

Observations of teaching practice – seminar

This was a highly successful online seminar. The 2 hours just flew by.

I loved that we started with talking about how we feel about being observed. Learning that the other students share my fear or doubts about evaluating each other and being observed by tutors made me feel more relaxed about the process. Additionally, having read the case study for this seminar made me understand the need for this exercise better and I look forward to taking part in it.

I think using whiteboard to record our thoughts was a fantastic way to share the opinions and have something that we can come back to after. I have never used the whiteboard in my sessions and will keep this technique in mind for the future.

We could clearly see that we experience mixed emotions about having our teaching observed – we were excited, curious, open, fine but also self-conscious, feeling watched, vulnerable and worried. I definitely feel less anxious about evaluation part of our assessment after having discussed it in the session.

I liked that we used Padlet to share our thoughts on the case studies we read for the seminar. I feel that I could take away from the reading more by having to respond to it by thinking about opportunities for development and tips for the teacher and what further questions I can ask about it. I use Padlet in my teaching and learning practice already. However, this seminar has thought me how I can follow up with discussing some of the responses further by asking participants to vote and choose the most popular ones.

Evaluating teaching

Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, 1932. [Photograph]. *Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest*. Retrieved 5 Mar 2023, from
https://quest.eb.com/search/132_1507062/1/132_1507062/cite

Evaluating – Chapter 6 of Macfarlane, B. (2004) Teaching with integrity: the ethics of higher education practice. London: Routledge Falmer.

I read the case studies first.

I could relate to Professor Stephanie Rae experience in many ways; however, I found her reactions quite defensive. She took the comments very personally and I think this could cloud her judgment and prevent her from thinking about using the feedback in a constructive way. I think we all can feel a little embarrassed about someone else seeing our students’ feedback or be a bit frustrated with the comments that we find unfair. These are some of my fears and feelings that I experience now knowing that my sessions are going to be observed and commented on this term. Reading about Stephanie has helped me to prepare for the coming evaluations, or dare I say, even looking forward to them.

Stephanie made a few assumptions that I think could prevent her from evaluating her teaching methods. For example, when learning that students would like more handouts and the slides available before the lecture, she thinks that this would be ‘spoon feeding’ them. Instead, she could think why it is that they asked for the extra material and how to design the handouts that they can inspire further inquiry rather than provide a ready answer.

Another assumption that Stephanie made was when she learnt about the students still not understanding the assessment and thought that the comments were coming from the students with poor attendance and low marks. I believe it would be much more constructive to look at the assessment format and evaluate if she could make it more accessible, without making any judgments about the students.

After reading the case studies I came back to reading the whole chapter. I agree with author that a variety of methods should be employed to evaluate the quality of teaching. Very interesting point made here is that students “are not always best placed to make evaluations in areas where they have no expert knowledge (…).” Additionally, the learners may actually mark down our teaching methods when we introduce a problem-based approach, or one based on a critical pedagogy. Very interesting!

Creative education

Reading “Killing the Goose: Conflicts between Pedagogy and Politics in the Delivery of a Creative Education” by Ruth Dineen and Elspeth Collins

Lorenz, A. (1997) *Binding ties.* Bologna: Sintesi Edizioni.

I was inspired to read this article from the reading list provided for our introductory workshop, as I am preparing a teaching session for the Research Season 2023 The Value of Creativity. I thought that the theme of the event corresponds well with the subject of the article.

The article defined creativity and the creative process first. It offered a comprehensive definition by Osche (1968) which states that creativity involves ‘bringing something into being that is original (new, unusual, novel, unexpected) and also valuable (useful, good, adaptive, appropriate)’. I was surprised that the outcome of the creative process must be judged as ‘valuable’ by the definition. The explanation that this judgement should be carried out by individual, or a group of experts clarified this bit for me further (still leaving me thinking how many issues it can pose).

Further in the article the authors highlight the importance of the creative process itself and the fact that assessment of the outcome and time constraints present in the higher education can restrain creativity itself. .

Within education the most salient factors affecting creativity are:

the environment and atmosphere
teaching styles, methods and strategies
project types and outcomes
the use of rewards, assessment and evaluation
learner motivation and learning styles
personality traits of the learner

What a huge responsibility we have as teachers! To repeat after the article: “The biggest single influence on the atmosphere in any classroom is the teacher/lecturer. Successful lecturers (in terms of fostering creativity) are themselves self-motivated, creative thinkers, acting as models for their students.”

I agree with the authors that diversity, ambiguity, and uncertainty may support creativity, but it can be increasingly difficult within a target-driven culture of the current education system. However, my reading focus remained on the place of creativity in learning and teaching part of the article.

I found the research about creativity itself and how we can influence it within education, presented here, highly informative and inspiring. It provided me with some ideas for the session: focus on the atmosphere, leave space for speculation and fantasy and provide/facilitate for active or even playful participation. I think that an OBL session using special collections items would give me an opportunity to use and test the above ideas. It would also fit well The Value of Creativity theme of the research season.