The medium became the message: the MEDAL project as learning space

Our contribution offers a retrospective glimpse into some perspectives on the MEDAL (Making a difference: educational development to enhance academic literacy) project, a three-year initiative that created a pedagogic network for childhood studies (CS), a new, complex and rapidly evolving area of research and undergraduate study. It aims to capture the sense of community that evolved throughout the project, because this underpinned our sense of the conceptual change and professional development that MEDAL brought about for the individuals working within it. Our narrative incorporates the core team’s perspectives and explores the ways that this group worked with others in a community that came to encompass members with a range of experiences, disciplines and backgrounds. In particular we will focus on the ways that MEDAL co-collaborators included students and emerging pedagogic writers, and highlight some of the common issues and ideas that emerged across the various electronic, physical and metaphorical spaces that the project developed. We draw on our own reflections and on data gathered by an independent researcher in interviews with staff and students, illuminating the ways in which MEDAL offered us what Savin-Baden (2007) calls “learning space”

Exploring the rules of engagement via exemplars: enhancing staff and student dialogue about assessment and learning practice

This is an ESCalate Developing Pedagogy and Practice grant awarded to Kay Sambell of Northumbria University in 2009. This project develops a bank of activities and resources to enable Education staff to use concrete exemplars of student work as a means of enabling their students to approach assessment effectively. There will be two inter-related phases, one targeted on staff, one focused on their students. Both phases seek to promote dialogue about the tacit rules of engagement surrounding assessmen

Assessment for learning: a critical review of a contested territory

The aim of this research seminar is to engage in a critical exploration of Assessment for Learning (AfL), situated within the higher education research literature. This is timely because AfL is generating significant interest as a way to improve student learning

Towards an assessment partnership model?: students' experiences of being engaged as partners in Assessment for Learning (AfL) enhancement activity

The aim of this book is to build on existing and emerging expertise in staff-student partnerships that go beyond the consultation model, instead illustrating an approach of staff and students collaborating to facilitate institutional change. Following the collaborative philosophy of the book, chapter proposals are invited from staff-student author teams, focusing on student involvement regarding learning and teaching development, and evaluation and research respectively. The book will be co-edited by a staff-student editorial team

Editorial: Practitioner Research in Higher Education, 11 (1)

This special issue of Practitioner Research in Higher Education focuses specifically on assessment and feedback. We know that assessment has a powerful influence on student engagement and learning, making it an important focus for enhancement activity. We also know, however, that assessment is a nuanced, complex and contested area of university practice, which makes it a notoriously challenging one to change. Heightened awareness of the centrality of assessment-related matters, a commitment to scholarly endeavour and the processes of conducting, sharing and debating diverse approaches and perspectives are all vital. The two research papers and nine evaluation studies of innovative practice in this issue provide insight into the ways that many academics are, in various ways, investigating and enhancing their practice in this important area

The Professional Doctorate by Portfolio: Alternative Assessment for Advanced Practitioner-Led Scholarship?

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) offers a bottom-up, locally situated and contextualized approach to enhancing educational practice. It has been championed for several years, yet remains curiously undervalued within the academy, despite clear benefits for curricular development and staff engagement. This paper reflects upon the production of an auto-ethnographic reflective evaluation of SoTL activities relating to architectural education, forming part of the first author’s portfolio-based assessment for a Professional Doctorate in Education (Ed D). The paper evaluates the challenges and potential of undertaking this doctoral assessment path, which appears to be seldom employed, at least in the UK. Particular attention is placed on negotiated assessment by portfolio as a key driver for practical value, and the flexibility that this route affords for academics to shape their professional development through SoTL activities. Affordances and challenges of this pathway for practitioner-led scholarship and doctoral recognition are illuminated.Keywords: portfolio assessment; doctoral assessment; scholarship of teaching and learning; professional doctorate, pragmatis

Putting assessment for learning into practice

In higher education we’re increasingly aware of the power of assessment and its influence on learning and teaching. The Centre for Excellence in Assessment for Learning (CETL AfL) at Northumbria University is developing the principles and the practice of both formative and summative assessment with the overall goal of improving learning and developing students’ capacities for self–direction and lifelong learning. In the workshop we will outline the principles of AfL, provide case studies of AfL practice from a range of subjects and help participants to consider how similar approaches might enhance learning in their own disciplinary contexts