Chapter 6: Students’ experiences of the participative assessment process 6.1 Introduction
6.6 How self-assessment deepened students’ learning experiences
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process made a significant contribution to encouraging students to see themselves as part of an assessment community and created a dynamic environment for interactions between the students and the lecturer. The feedback process also provided a platform on which students could develop deeper approaches to learning discussed in the next section.
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statement that self-assessment has the potential to encourage students to move from surface and strategic approaches to deeper approaches to learning in approaching assessment tasks.
Rather than thinking about how best they can please an external assessor, students began to consider what they themselves were seeking to achieve and how they understood the work and their own performances in the light of these expectations.
A related finding was the degree to which the process prompted students to recognise the need to take responsibility for their own learning. In this respect, students’ remarks were both heartening and troubling – heartening because they demonstrated how participative assessment can enhance learning, and troubling because of the sense of missed opportunity expressed by several students referring to their undergraduate experiences. The views of many were captured in this emotive response by S13:
[Self-assessment] gives you an opportunity to actually look at your work, where you are coming from and to ask yourself questions about what you are writing. This makes you realise some of the things you did at the time when you answered the questions [were not adequately developed] and I found that very, very helpful – extremely helpful, given my undergraduate background where you just write an essay and hand it in. You don’t even look at it twice. You just hand it. It comes back, you look at the mark and you throw it away. But in this case you write your essay, you look at it, you critique it, you look at it again, you add something that you want to add, you actually evaluate it yourself and that’s helpful because it sticks into your mind. It becomes a part of you. It’s not just a paper you are handing in – it’s your baby that you are taking care of (3667-3679).
From the above statement it seems clear the students’ involvement in assessing their own work was not only empowering – it encouraged them to take ownership of their learning, but also brought home the need to be actively involved in the construction of their own knowledge. As S11 observed:
I think you are just a little bit more aware of what you are doing when you are writing than when the lecturer was this distant person somewhere in the abstract world, but you become your own lecturer, you become your own critic, you become your own marker (3343-3346).
It further demonstrated how, through the involvement of students as partners within assessment communities, participative assessment can enhance learning. SO4’s comments provide further evidence of this:
Last night I was reflecting about the way I was conducting myself for my BA and the way I’m going about things now. I think that when you have that attitude that I had for my BA that was ‘I’m writing this paper and I need to pass’ … so you just write. If it’s a pass I’m happy, I’ll get my eighty but I’ll just park it. It was just to pass – to go through the process. It did not have that
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much meaning to me … but because of these kind of learning experiences I’ve becoming more responsible. I’m thinking, ‘Okay this is my work. It’s going to reflect my future conduct. It’s going to have an impact on everything that I’m doing so.’ I’m beginning to be more responsible to my work ... I’m even more concerned. I’m reading what other people did and checking other people’s work and beginning to take more responsibility for my learning – rather than just going into class and taking what the lecturer has given me and putting that into the exam paper (3281-3286).
Of significance to me in this respect was the students’ response to my intuitive belief that the sense of enhanced personal responsibility expressed in such comments related to the fact that they were all postgraduate students. In my own observation, students naturally adopt a more mature and responsible attitude towards their learning when they begin postgraduate courses.
This view was, however, rejected by the students who were adamant that, for them, it was the process and not the year of academic study that had made the difference. This view was evident in S04’s remark that:
I don’t think it’s about not being undergrad. I think it’s about how the process was structured, because most of my undergrad was just going to class … the lecturer preaches to you … you take it as gospel truth … then you put that into your paper … It started me thinking and I became more responsible (3300- 3306).
What was also significant in this regard was the degree to which several of the students spoke at length about how they regretted the fact that similar processes had not been applied during their undergraduate years. One student, in particular, said that being involved in similar processes in her early years at university might have transformed her approach to her work.
While I believe these remarks are worthy of attention, I’m aware that the results are inconclusive. The study did not set out to explore the relationship between students’
undergraduate learning experiences and assessment, but I believe this is an area that warrants further investigation.
Is seems clear from the above that by including a process of self-assessment the participative assessment process used during this module contributed to students adopting deeper approaches to learning and encouraged them to take greater responsibility for their own learning. In so doing, the evidence suggests, the process also contributed to students’
development as autonomous learners. Further evidence relating to this theme will be found in the final section of this analysis that deals with how participative assessment contributed to enhancing students meta-cognitive abilities.
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