Patch 4 (800 words): A critical review of an article presented at a seminar.
Final commentary (500 words): A reflection on the learning journey and a position with respect
to the two approaches.
The PTAs were written as blogs in PebblePad to which the tutors had access for monitoring and
assessment purposes.
Nineteen students consented to having their PTAs analysed for research purposes. We interviewed
eleven of them at the end of the semester (after the grades had been submitted) about the
experience. The main points emerging from these interviews can be summarised as follows:
The PTAs had supported the students' learning and, in some cases, it had felt far less stressful
than the traditional assessments where there is one single final submission. Many said that the
assessment represented their learning process well, as much as the final stage of their knowledge.
Many said they had enjoyed this new way of learning that seemed justified in the unit. However, it
must be said that the novelty generated considerable anxiety at the beginning and we realised that
much more information would need to be made available at an early stage. Although considerable
time was devoted to producing marking criteria that were appropriate for the assessment, there
was room for improvement in this respect.
2011-2013
The PTA has continued as the main assessment in the unit in Critical Social Psychology. This has
allowed us to monitor the students’ performance over three years. As can be seen in table 1,
submission rates continue to be very high and no cases of plagiarism have happened for some
time, but the mean grade has been dropping consistently, for which we do not have an
explanation. Last academic year the average grade was 9.1 which is equivalent of a C.
Although the majority of the students write their patches on time, some students experience
difficulties with the technology. Despite the multiple instructions provided at the beginning and
through the VLE, several students don't seem to be able to come to terms with the way in which a
blog works in PebblePad and require substantial assistance on the part of the tutors.
However, overall, the students’ evaluations of the assessment are positive. Internal reviewers as
well as the external examiner consider this as an innovative type of assessment which should be
extended to Level 4 and 5.
Research dimension
The DePTA project included a research dimension which involved analysing a sample of the PTAs
produced by students taking the unit in 2010-11. This was based on Grounded Theory (Glaser &
Strauss, 1969). Although initially, we drew on argumentation analysis (Toulmin, 1958; Liakopoulos,
2000) in order to identify the components of the arguments present in the patches, we encountered
some difficulties with this model and soon developed a simpler version consisting of main claims,
THE CENTRE FOR RECORDING ACHIEVEMENT 104 -108 WALLGATE, WIGAN, WN3 4AB |
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