Evidencing against predefined criteria

With the JISC eApel project underway within the department, I have an opportunity to look at it from a side perspective.

The process to evidence oneself against predefined criteria using e-Portfolios is in itself, very innovative. The methodology could be used for so many subject and in so many different way's.

Take for example Job Applications, if you have ever applied for a job, you will have noticed that you have to evidence yourself against the criteria, the employer is looking for. It would be a lot easier if an application listed the predefined criteria and forced the prospective employee to write against them. At the moment in time, this process is done in a generic way which judges the skills that are being advertised along with the hidden skill of reflection. The e-Apel project focuses the reflection and allows the weaker writers an opportunity to easily show their experience.

Patchwork Text Assessment

Last week myself and one of my colleagues attended a staff development session provide by academics from the University of Anglia on the topic of patchwork assessment's.

A patchwork assessment is basically a collection of sub task's that are given to groups or individuals which can then be used within a final synthesis. Even though this method is not new, it does focus the academic on preparing each task. The ability to drop one of the task's gives the learner a feel of control of their their learning without compromising learning quality.

One example was shown included group work in which students are split into groups and then have to write a really short essay on a particular subject. The students are then given the opportunity to constructively give feedback to each other. In terms of moderation, the lecturer 'drop's in on group conversations.

Currently this is done manually, but this would be an ideal opportunity to develop an online commentating and critiquing system, that would allow for students to copy each others work and get inspiration without plagiarising, so rather having one teach, have multiple...!!!!

Paperless Office

An e-mail has been doing the rounds this morning regarding, climate change. With the improvement of academics using electronic documents, are we at a stage were we can drop the paper and save the trees (im really a hippy in disguise ;) ).

With regards to the department that I work in, we could possibly turn all our document's into electronic format especially the forms....

Imagine that, a zero paper department !!

We already seemto be heading down that route, so why not give it a little push......