Bob

Bart was quite excited about the possibilities for refreshing his teaching after he'd learned more about ways of using technology more effectively. When he shared his enthusiasm with his colleague Bob, who is one of the lecturers in his programme team, Bob told him that he agreed that there was value in the whole team considering what could be done, but he also said,

"To be honest, a lot of the issues we struggle with are more around assessment than anything else. We tried to be a bit more flexible, but there's concern about issues around workload and academic integrity. Unfortunately, some of the technologies also make it easier for students under pressure to look for short-cuts and take risks copying assignments or just by-passing thinking! And, you don't need me to tell you that when you're marking piles of student assignments or exams it can be dispiriting to see how clearly some have not really learned the subject as well as we'd have hoped. A lot of time and effort goes into assessment, both for ourselves and the students. If there was something we could do around that aspect, I'd say that more of the team would be willing to get involved."

Bart thought for a moment or two about this. He knew that Bob was right. Assessment has so many issues associated with it, and whilst the department prides itself on what it considers the high standards of their courses and students, he knew that their assessment methods were very traditional in design (which some colleagues see as positive!) and that it sometimes wasn't that clear that the students had learned the subject area so much as become very skilled at exams and standard essay writing.

"This DigCompEdu framework also has a section on Assessment, Bob. Perhaps we need to dive into that a bit more deeply and see if it can help us?" he replied. Bob offered to look into it and report back to Bart and the programme team.

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