‘Why are they making me do this assignment’
Here’s a typical example of an exchange with a student who has come for help to the Learning support Service:
‘Have you read the assignment brief?’
‘Yes’.
‘Do you know what skills or knowledge you have to demonstrate in this assignment?’
‘No.’
Are you clear on how your work is going to be graded?
‘No.’
Assignments are what bring most students beating a path to the Learning Support Service and often the issue is trying to decipher what the assignment requires and how it will be assessed. Our work with the LSS at IADT is with mature students, students with Dyslexia, ADHD, ASD and DCD. We work with so called mainstream students, first year straight out of school students and fourth year creative art students engaged in the (for them) tortuous process of presenting their thesis research topic in 12,000 words of academic language.
It is bizarre how popular entertainment shows seem to be obsessed with passing judgment these days. The appeal of XFactor, Strictly and Bakeoff relies on giving us the vicarious pleasures and pain of appraising and being evaluated. The audience empathise with the bakers’, dancer’s and singers’ emotional rollercoaster of dread, humiliation, relief and pride as the judges deliver their verdicts. They may be brutally honest and occasionally cruel but they’re the experts so we can take a guilty pleasure in them.
But being on the receiving end of assessment and evaluation is not so entertaining when it’s a direct experience. For many students it is a baffling and mystifying process. The rigid summative hurdle of final school exams has earned them on a place in higher education but the assessment landscape has completely changed. And not always for the better.
Most students would say they prefer continuous assessment to final exams. Ideally the assignment cycle of briefing, work and feedback establishes and builds their learning strengths. But while it can and should be a challenging experience all too often the assignment is conceived, designed and presented in a way that makes little sense to the student and fails to guide them towards the desired goal. The point of the assignment is the real Xfactor!
Learning outcomes should dictate the design of the assignment and the criteria to assess those outcomes should be clearly and explicitly stated in language the student can understand. The problem with many assignment briefs is that they aren’t written for students but for exam boards or curriculum review or programme validation panels.
Learning Support Tutors are regularly faced with trying to help student unpack assignments briefs that are so convoluted they probably make sense only to the person who wrote them. We are very aware that on some programmes the students rarely need to approach us because the assignments are designed with students in mind and the focus is on assisting the student to develop their learning and present it to their best ability rather than try to interpret the intentions of the writer.
In the end it comes down to a Universal Design for Learning approach that benefits not only students with specific learning difficulties but facilitates learning for all students.
IADT lecturers Sherra Murphy Sharon McGreevy and I will be presenting at the Conference under the heading, Why are you making me do this assignment?, looking at inclusive approaches to designing, assessing and supporting first year students with a range of challenges, increasing their abilities and sense of self-belief.
http://www.iadt.ie/en/
