Making meaning: An investigation into staff’s relational experience of academic development in an applied arts assessment context

This article investigates the role of an academic development programme associated with the implementation of newly designed assessment criteria in the UK-based Arts University. The introduction of new assessment criteria was accompanied by a pan-university academic staff development intervention. In a small-scale qualitative study, we researched staff’s experience of meaning-making and present three interconnected themes: the relationships between attendees; their relationship with the criteria; and relational understandings within the context of expectations of academic development. We deploy Honneth’s theory of recognition and make recommendations for policy makers and academic developers to support the design of socially just academic development opportunities

Enhancing assessment using equitable practice at University of the Arts London

This paper presents the ‘Enhancing Assessment for Equity’ strand of the Academic Enhancement Model at UAL, which aims to support course teams as they devise an equitable assessment environment that promotes attainment. We report on our work so far, asking: • How can focusing on students’ journeys through assessment help highlight sites of inequity? • How can assessment design contribute to social justice? • How can assessment practice (marking, grading and feedback approaches) be interrogated and made more equitable

Identifying and resolving key institutional challenges in feedback and assessment: a case study for implementing change

As a consequence of increasing pressures to enhance assessment and feedback in response to the National Student Satisfaction (NSS) and Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), universities continue to invest significant time and resources in making improvements to this area of practice. Since 2013 the University of Greenwich has adapted, enhanced and implemented an approach called TESTA (Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment). This case study offers a unique and sustained institutional perspective of the landscape of assessment and feedback. It examines the results from the analysis of 157 programmes over 5 years categorised as a top ten set of challenges. Through an examination of programme documentation and module evaluation by staff, the paper highlights some findings of facilitators, barriers and impact at institutional, faculty, departmental, programme and module levels. Its ultimate aim is to explore the real impact of TESTA and to contribute to an understanding of the conditions required for making and disseminating changes and spreading good practice across an HE institution

Belonging through Assessment: Pipelines of Compassion

A digital book that presents the research and resources created from the QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project - Belonging through Assessment: Pipelines of Compassion with UAL, Glasgow School of Art and Leeds Arts University

Belonging through assessment: Pipelines of compassion QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project 2021

In February 2021, colleagues from University of the Arts London (UAL), Leeds Arts University (LAU) and Glasgow School of Art (GSA) secured funding for the QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project – Belonging through assessment: Pipelines of compassion. The project began against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and the team identified a shift in assessment practices across the three participating arts institutions. This offered an opportunity to further our work, in collaboration, to address social justice, belonging and inclusion through compassion. This project aims to: 1. Identify areas of enhancement in assessment policies and practices to promote student sense of belonging and tackle issues of social justice. 2. Link this relational work with attainment gap/awarding differentials agendas in the creative arts. 3. Develop collaborative, dialogic, polyvocal and affective resources for staff development across the HE sector. Three research strands emerged from themes relevant to our own institutional priorities, mutually informing the project and institutional practice and policy. These are pass/fail grading, trauma-informed policy and compassionate feedback. Initial cross-institutional research and evaluation into pass/fail assessment was taking place at UAL and at LAU in the wake of measures introduced during the pandemic. The trauma-informed policy strand developed from academic enhancement work on Fostering Belonging and Compassionate Pedagogy at UAL. The compassionate feedback research strand linked to enhancement work in progress at GSA around assessment policies and practice and with UAL work on formative feedback practices and assessment design. The following sections introduce and then delve into each of the research strands in turn, providing both theory and practical advice. The final section of the resource outlines indicators for compassionate assessment across both higher education policy and practice

Alchemy and Amalgam: Translation in the Works of Charles Baudelaire

Alchemy and Amalgam explores a relatively un-researched area of the Baudelairean corpus (his translations from English) and relates them to the rest of his works. It seeks to establish a link between translational and creative writing, arguing for a reassessment of the place of translation in Baudelaire's writing method. The book is one of the first of its kind to link the study of the translational activity of a major writer to his 'creative' writings. It is also one of the first to provide an integrated presentation of French 19th-century translation approaches and to link them to questions of copyright and authorship in the context of the rise of capitalism and romantic views of creation and genius. It offers, therefore, a new perspective both on translation history and on literary history. Alchemy and Amalgam will be of interest to students of translation, comparative literature and French studies

Being in Translation

Being in Translation was a paper delivered with Dr Emily Saline at the Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse International Students in Open or Online Learning Environments: A Research Symposium​. ‘Becoming Lost and Found in Translation’ is a participatory co-designed research project involving University of the Arts London students and staff. It investigates how acts of translation can enhance learning, critical thinking and help foster a sense of community amongst a diverse home and International student cohort in open and online learning environments. Our approach blends design, education theory and translation theory: we are particularly interested in the ways translation enables us to explore transitions from one state to another, liberating and decolonising curricula and how translation itself advances thinking in design education. The project was co-created with international students on their design degree. They developed interactive tools and designs, including an Instagram site (bla.bla.bla.translation) where new students were invited to introduce their experience aiming to encourage reflection on belonging, design, and the role of language and translation for new students, as well as what living in translation means. bell hooks says in, Teaching to Transgress, “To hear each other (the sound of different voices), to listen to one another, is an exercise in recognition. It also ensures that no student remains invisible”. This interactive presentation introduces a project developed at the University of the Arts London to create an online a space for students to correspond, in multiple languages, to share heritages and to learn about different cultures. The starting point of our project asked students to translate our collaboratively constructed London College of Communication ‘Design School Manifesto’, into over 45 languages that are some of the ones spoken at UAL. Students were encouraged to display their translations and interact by correcting, amending, discussing the translations both verbally and through drawing. Students then moved on to other discussions, dialogues and collaborations in online spaces. During the London Design Festival 2020 we launched an interactive Instagram, bla.bla.bla.translation. This is a place where the Design School Manifesto can be translated, reworked and reimagined through a series of regular challenges, take overs, live events, online workshops, and stories. These spaces encourage reflection on belonging, design, and the role of language and translation in community building, as well as what living in translation means. One key component is to encourage all students (including English native speakers) to encounter and interact with other languages and cultures through online guided reflection. After presenting the project, we engage the participants in online interactions with the Becoming lost and Found in Translation Padlet used by students and staff at UAL as a form of Q & A

Belonging through assessment: Pipelines of compassion

In this session, we present our QAA funded collaborative project. We discuss the context for the project and look at how the themes of compassion and belonging interact with assessment. We also outline the ambitions of the project and discuss ideas for compassionate assessment practice and policies

Challenging Assessment Habits

This paper looks at assessment as a site of potential discriminatory practice. Presented through an analysis of theory, curricula interventions and evaluations, it argues that without reviewing assessment design, content and format through the lens of social justice (McArthur 2018), awarding gaps may remain. We suggest that employing a wide range of curriculum approaches e.g. reviewing curriculum, increasing student staff ratio and embedding language and academic support, may be a wasted opportunity if assessment is not reviewed and seen under the spotlight of equitable practice.     How can we create an assessment environment in which the oppressed can be active in changing the structures of oppression (Freire 1972)?   We report on the approach at the University of the Arts London (and entitled ‘Enhancing Assessment for Equity’), which guides course teams as they review their assessment design and practices. Areas of enquiry range from an exploration of the values of assessment for social justice to a close look at the student assessment journey through their course and reworking of formative and summative assessment practices. Using logic-chain theory (Thomas, 2020), we find that the act of summative assessment itself may indeed prevent other curricula interventions, such as formative assessment, (Winstone and Carless 2019) having more than a minimal effect on the trajectory of awarding data (Mc Vitty 2022). Included in this work is the exploration of the positive impact of ungraded assessment as evidenced in recent institutional research led by the Academic Enhancement team at UAL.   We propose that in looking at assessment through the lens of social justice we can create an assessment environment that does not cause harm and instead becomes a centre for making meaning, improving students’ attainment and belonging