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Assessment assessment - part 6 May 6, 2005

Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , 2comments

( This series is getting a bit lengthy, up to part 6 already, so for the readers’ convenience, here again are the links to the Action Enquiry Report and the Assessment cover sheet )

Quoting

This is the first question which is asked in the Assessment cover sheet:

Sometimes I found it difficult to know when you were talking about someone else’s ideas and when you were talking about your own ideas- eg on your blog when talking about Wenger’s ideas on CoP you merely supply a link to his website then list some paragraphs outlining what CoPs could be – some ideas seem to be his, some yours. But it’s hard for me to tell. Could you keep this in mind?

This sounds valid, I wouldn’t want to be quoting something to illustate an idea with which I disagree only for the reader to mistake it for my own views. But let’s examine the only example given, the review of Wenger on COPs which appears in my blog entry COP part 1. The quote from Wenger’s website is introduced in the following way…

Etienne Wenger defines COPS thus

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better. etc etc

So we have the word “thus” followed by an indented paragraph which contains text from the very website linked to. That’s a very common way to quote from other sites, almost a standard. It’s pretty obvious those are Wenger’s words and not mine, how much clearer does it have to be? Subsequently in that blog series, I describe various communities with which I am familar and how they relate to Wenger’s definition, discuss possible problems with Wenger’s criteria, and pose the idea of ‘communities of identity’ which are not COPs. Those are my ideas, it’s me, writing on my blog, not quoting anybody. If somebody is still confused by that, I don’t think there’s much more I can do for them.

Assessment assessment - part 5 May 5, 2005

Posted by Andy Roberts in : ultraversity , add a comment

A note about style

A note about style – this is nothing new to you but I feel it needs to be noted. Sometimes I feel you write in a way that isn’t in keeping with a style that is academic. (you might be happy about that) It’s not necessarily a problem, and it highlights the tension we have between wanting innovation and needing to conform to university regulations. For example, when you say that qualitative methodology is what journalists use – I found this to be a bit simplistic. There are many different types of journalism. Academic style tends to be more tentative because there is more than one way of interpreting something.

Isn’t in keeping with a style that is academic - what tosh! and then the reference to university regulations - yes REGULATIONS!

What might these regulations be I wonder ?

Academic style doesn’t have to be like that - there are many different types of academic writing, including clear and concise, strong polemic and socratic dialogue. Conjecture is all very well but I deplore tentative statements which relieve the author of any responsibility to stand behind them.

The description of journalistic research as an illustration of qualitative methods is a good one, in the context.

Qualitative research concerns itself with revealing the nature or truth about a subject through a journey of discovery, systematically following leads and searching for relevance. It’s what journalists and anthropologists do, whereas quantitative research is what Highway planners and epidemiologists do - counting journeys or identifying clusters through statistical analysis.

Reading again the above sentence which was picked on as breaking the university regulations for academic style, I find the criticism laughable. Over simplisitic? Compare it with this sentence:

Sometimes I feel you write in a way that isn’t in keeping with a style that is academic

It’s awkward, imprecise and just sounds kind of snooty without explaining anything. I wouldn’t be doing myself any favours by accepting lessons in writing style if this is the result.

Academic style tends to be more tentative because there is more than one way of interpreting something.

What Everything? I don’t accept that all interpretations are equally valid, nor that reality is created inside people’s heads. I happen to subscribe to the philosophical position which holds that the material world does actually exist and can become known to us. Am I still allowed to get a degree or would I first be expected to undergo surgery to have that part of my brain removed.

Assessment assessment - part 4 May 5, 2005

Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , 2comments

Peer Reviewers

“I’d be interested in how your very capable peer reviewers found reading your work.”

Comment One - Linda Hartley

Hi all

In Andy’s feedback Gina suggests that this might be the start of a discussion:

Ability to relate theory to practice.

Excellent – I can see clearly how you have absorbed the reading you have done into the work you carried out in creating a wiki. I can appreciate the time you have spent in expressing your thoughts and emerging ideas in different media

I am not aware of Andy using a wide range of media to explore his ideas, just the blog and 43Things in this instance. These are just web sites - one form of media or am I missing something? Personally I used blog, 43Things, and quicktime movies stored on my FC web space. Eve what do you think?

– I find this at times a challenging way for me to piece together your thoughts- I’d venture to say it’s easier for a reader to take in an author’s ideas if he or she doesn’t have to visit many places to read those ideas.

Perhaps you have a different view of the internet to mine. I am not so aware of a sense of movement between spaces when I click a link as you seem to be. I find it easy to thread the whole together and follow Andy’s meaning usually.

Having said that, when I come back to your work for the second time, I come with a sense of seeing your ideas unfold and develop. I’m always going to waver on this point – should your ideas be in one place with clear headings in a more conventional format, or is your work a valid way of using media in a fresh and more accessible way? I can’t answer it. I’d just like to work less hard sometimes when taking on your ideas.

Is it wrong to make the reader work hard? Should we be considering this in our presentation of the work? I’m not so sure. Maybe the reader needs to concentrate and stretch their mind to understand the work, does this make it a bad piece of work? Is easy better?

I may have to concentrate to understand Andy’s meaning sometimes. I have to do that when I read anythng serious. I hope people give my work similar sort of attention.

It would be good to have a continuing dialogue about this- perhaps assessment ought to be more of a dialogue that a one sided judgement. I’d be interested in how your very capable peer reviewers found reading your work.

So what do we think on this point?

Personally I’m not sure that there’s a qualative difference between Andy’s work and mine and Eve’s. We all tend to use a ‘patchwork’ from various sources or spheres where we are active on the web (blog, 43Things, stuff stored on FC webspace, even sometimes comments on other people’s blogs.)

Does it make our work harder to mark? Quite possibly, certainly you can’t easily print off our work and read it. or copy it to cd. But then we are doing a ‘100% on-line degree’.

However read on-line, with reasonable attention paid I usually understand what Andy’s meaning is. I dont’ find it any harder or easier to follow than Eve’s work usually.

I know that Gina won’t feel able to look at my work or yours Eve but perhaps the knowledge that we got 79% and 78% respectively and used not disimmilar methods to present our work might be of interest.

Linda Hartley (Cohort 1)

Comment Two - Eve Thirkle

Linda Hartley on 29 April 2005 at 22:09 +0000 wrote:

Hi all

In Andy’s feedback Gina suggests that this might be the start of a discussion:

That’ll teach me to check in here while printing off directions! Some quick feedback and more to follow whenI’ve had a think!

Ability to relate theory to practice.

Excellent – I can see clearly how you have absorbed the reading you have done into the work you carried out in creating a wiki. I can appreciate the time you have spent in expressing your thoughts and emerging ideas in different media

I am not aware of Andy using a wide range of media to explore his ideas, just the blog and 43Things in this instance. These are just web sites - one form of media or am I missing something? No I’m with you there on that - all websites - but perhaps with a different ‘utility’ they appear to be different media? Personally I used blog, 43Things, and quicktime movies stored on my FC web space. Eve what do you think? I used blog, referrred to 43 in the peer bit and also the movies plus pictures.

– I find this at times a challenging way for me to piece together your thoughts- I’d venture to say it’s easier for a reader to take in an author’s ideas if he or she doesn’t have to visit many places to read those ideas.

Perhaps you have a different view of the internet to mine. I am not so aware of a sense of movement between spaces when I click a link as you seem to be. I find it easy to thread the whole together and follow Andy’s meaning usually.

I’ve done the whole of my LIWPS2 as a website - there are many links and pages and also ‘back’ referrering links to present a coherent whole - any links that are external to my work I have put to open in a new window so that it doesn’t detract from my main presentation - possibly something to think about? Andy’s work is fine as far as I am concerned.

Having said that, when I come back to your work for the second time, I come with a sense of seeing your ideas unfold and develop. I’m always going to waver on this point – should your ideas be in one place with clear headings in a more conventional format, or is your work a valid way of using media in a fresh and more accessible way? I can’t answer it. I’d just like to work less hard sometimes when taking on your ideas.

Is it wrong to make the reader work hard? Why is it hard work? Should we be considering this in our presentation of the work? Possibly - if the hard work puts people off - I found it hard to follow the pdf you sent recently for peer review - but I find lots of words hard work. - perhaps the answer is to have a different option to choose and present it three ways but … probably not at this level.I’m not so sure. Maybe the reader needs to concentrate and stretch their mind to understand the work, does this make it a bad piece of work? Is easy better?

I may have to concentrate to understand Andy’s meaning sometimes. I have to do that when I read anythng serious. I hope people give my work similar sort of attention.Ditto

It would be good to have a continuing dialogue about this- perhaps assessment ought to be more of a dialogue that a one sided judgement. I’d be interested in how your very capable peer reviewers found reading your work.

So what do we think on this point?

Personally I’m not sure that there’s a qualative difference between Andy’s work and mine and Eve’s. We all tend to use a ‘patchwork’ from various sources or spheres where we are active on the web (blog, 43Things, stuff stored on FC webspace, even sometimes comments on other people’s blogs.) I can’t understand the differences sometimes - we’re all working at a similar level - the whole idea of the La’s was to avoid writing a 4000 word report - we weave the LA’s together to form a coherent whole - is the problem in the weaving or are we following the wrong pattern altogether?

Does it make our work harder to mark? Quite possibly, certainly you can’t easily print off our work and read it. or copy it to cd. But then we are doing a ‘100% on-line degree’.

However read on-line, with reasonable attention paid I usually understand what Andy’s meaning is. I dont’ find it any harder or easier to follow than Eve’s work usually.

I know that Gina won’t feel able to look at my work or yours Eve but perhaps the knowledge that we got 79% and 78% respectively and used not disimmilar methods to present our work might be of interest.

Gina’s welcome to loook at mine if she wants to see a comparator - not for comments obviously as we’ve had that discussion before.

I will look with interest on Monday to see how full my inbox is!

Eve

[Cohort 1]

“Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only that the cat died nobly.” — Arnold Edinborough

“Research is what I do when I don’t know what I’m doing.” — Wernher Von Braun

http://firstclass.ultraversity.net/~eve.thirkle/

http://evet.blogdrive.com

http://www.furl.net/members/EveT

I am quite happy to be quoted and for the quote to be attributed to me. Please do not anonymise me.

Assessment assessment - part 3 May 5, 2005

Posted by Andy Roberts in : ultraversity , comments closed

At this point I think it needs to be noted that part of the degree title negotiations included a statement from myself which is published here:

In particular this statement:

“I intend to continue to publish all of my coursework and other related activities as I go along in the form of a multi-media website and online Learning Journal.”

which was accepted and agreed at the time, and is what I have been sticking to for my part of the agreement, which makes it particularly galling to be judged largely on writing style, (which I shall defend anyway ), and be subjected to pressure to conform to the norm of presenting work as Microsoft Office documents like most of the rest of the students.

Assessment assessment - part 2 May 5, 2005

Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , 1 comment so far

The assessment starts off with a few brief positive points, in a factual tone, and then quickly launches into a description of the assessor’s problems.



LEARNING FACILITATOR Comments

Select and negotiate appropriate tasks. Meet learning objectives.

Excellent – You have met all learning objectives for this module to a high standard.

Ability to take responsibility for own learning.

Excellent – you excel in this also.

Ability to relate theory to practice.

Excellent – I can see clearly how you have absorbed the reading you have done into the work you carried out in creating a wiki. I can appreciate the time you have spent in expressing your thoughts and emerging ideas in different media – I find this at times a challenging way for me to piece together your thoughts- I’d venture to say it’s easier for a reader to take in an author’s ideas if he or she doesn’t have to visit many places to read those ideas. Having said that, when I come back to your work for the second time, I come with a sense of seeing your ideas unfold and develop. I’m always going to waver on this point – should your ideas be in one place with clear headings in a more conventional format, or is your work a valid way of using media in a fresh and more accessible way? I can’t answer it. I’d just like to work less hard sometimes when taking on your ideas. It would be good to have a continuing dialogue about this- perhaps assessment ought to be more of a dialogue that a one sided judgement. I’d be interested in how your very capable peer reviewers found reading your work.

The first thing to come up is this question of “different media”. Now, I have in the past made use of video, audio, animation - ultraversity used to encourage this - but in this particular report i didn’t use any of these - it’s all just text with some minimal graphics and one monochrome diagram. And the main body of the report is all presented as one long HTML document, formatted exactly as prescribed by the imposed Action Research tool, such as it is. So I don’t accept that I have in any way bamboozled the reader with a baffling mixture of media because it simply isn’t true. Perhaps the word media is being employed as in ‘Through the Looking Glass”

`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’



Then we get the complaint about having to ‘visit many places’. Being a webpage, the Action Enquiry tool allows the inclusion of HTML code such as hypertext links. It doesn’t really matter whether you visit the official Action Enquiry tool, or the version which I have published on my coursework website, they are practically identical. Both contain the same links, links to the learning activities, goals, reflections, peer review and blog entries which tghe reader can optionally explore as far as they wish. This website format is something which I have used right from the very start of year one, with encouragement, and yet suddenly it is being criticised as too hard work for the poor marker. The question is even raised that it may not be valid. “is your work a valid way … I can’t answer it”

As for suggesting an alternative with clear headings, well the headings used are exactly as directed by the imposed Action Enquiry tool pro forma so what on earth is that supposed to mean? I have indeed submitted a report the main part of which is all in one document ( not that I would agree to always to keep to that , a series of linked pages may be more effective sometimes ) and uses the prescribed headings but the one which has been assessed is bafflingly described as something completely different.

So it was suggested that there should be a continuing dialogue, including my peer review partners, which we tried to have, but then it turned out that “It would be good to have a continuing dialogue” doesn’t imply that it should actually happen at all. It was a mistake. Taking Humpty Dumpty to a new level, not just words but whole phrases and sentances can be paid off and made to mean whatever you want them to mean, or nothing at all.

Assessment assessment - part 1 May 4, 2005

Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , comments closed

I handed in a piece of university work recently, a substantial report representing over 200 hours work on a research project which I was interested in and went well.

Here’s a link to it
http://frankieroberto.com/dad/ultrastudents/andyroberts/year2/AEreport/AEtool.html

And here is a link to the assessment which I received back from my learning facilitator.

http://frankieroberto.com/dad/ultrastudents/andyroberts/year2/AEreport/mark.html

Since there are a number of direct questions asked in the assesment, and there is no obvious place where I am supposed to reply, I am going to use the blog for this purpose, in a series of articles which examine the assessment cover sheet and attempt to answer it.

degree title suffix

In this first part, I wish to deal with the optional degree title suffix.

Ultraversity offer to all students, the chance to add a suffix to the basic degree title “BA(hons) Learning, Technology, Research” although nearly all are dissuaded from doing so. I decided that it would be beneficial to attempt to incorporate my own speciality, Information Communication Technology (ICT) into the degree title and was sucessfully helped through the process to do so in year one last year. There will be another process to make sure I am still working towards the chosen degree title later this year, I am told, which seems fair enough.

But the thing which bothers me, is that the software which runs the Ultraversity stuff, and all of the pro-formas are never personalised for my own case. If I thought it was just an erroneous heading on a page then I could put up with that but whenever I query it I get given the same blank answer “your degree title will be reassessed at the end of the second year”, which is true as I have already explained, but it doesn’t answer my concerns at all.

My concerns are that the chosen degree title, and therefore the focus of my research, is simply never referred to anywhere, and I am extremely suspicious that it is simply forgotten about, even when my work is being assessed and advice given for future directions. This is important to me, because having an amended degree title means that I am not always trying to do the same type of work in the same proportions as other students who are doing the basic degree title, and yet my work is compared and assessed, apparently, as if it were. I would have thought that specialising in the technology aspect should at least mean that some effort is made by assessors to understand the technology I am researching and writing about, but it seems to be my writing style and skill at essay writing which attracts all of the analysis while the actual work I do and research barely gets a mention. If anything I feel as if I am being discouraged from pursuing the very thing which I was offered the chance to specialise in.

Why doesn’t the amended degree title appear in the feedback so that I can be sure it has been considered and not forgotten about?

The amended degree title is the one I am aiming to graduate in, but it is the incorrect unamended one which always appears in the titles, and this applies to all of the ultraversity tools, such as they are.

So I’ve begun by raising the question of the degree title then, to begin with. Future entries in this series will discuss selected parts of the substance of the assessment.

Nick Harper May 3, 2005

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music , 1 comment so far

Nick Harper 12118700_700a33e392_m

When I was at the Loudon Wainwright gig last week I picked up a leaflet about a guitar festival, and a ticket for Nick Harper. The support act was a lot better this time - Eleanor Mcevoy who plays a version of Memphis Tennesse which emphasises the lyrics. Nick was brilliant as always, still doing the same schtick as three years ago and before. A great night out to finish up a fine bank holiday weekend.

Memphis Tennessee (Chuck Berry)

Long distance information, give me Memphis Tennessee
Help me find the party trying to get in touch with me
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call
‘Cause my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall

Help me, information, get in touch with my Marie
She’s the only one who’d phone me here from Memphis Tennessee
Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge
Just a half a mile from the Mississippi Bridge

Help me, information, more than that I cannot add
Only that I miss her and all the fun we had
But we were pulled apart because her mom did not agree
And tore apart our happy home in Memphis Tennessee

Last time I saw Marie she’s waving me good-bye
With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye
Marie is only six years old, information please
Try to put me through to her in Memphis Tennessee