It seems hard to believe that I’ve been blogging on assessment, especially e-assessment, and especially the impact of e-assessment on students, for a year now.
Even more amazing is the fact that there is still so much I want to say. Assessment and e-assessment have been growth areas for the past 20 years or so (huge numbers of papers have been written and huge numbers of conference presentations given). In many ways we know so much…but yet we know so little. I’m not an expert, just an amateur pottering around the edges of a large, overpopulated and sometimes contested territory. I find it difficult to get my head around many of the concepts.
I’m also an amateur in the sense of ‘one who cultivates a particular study of art for the love of it’ (definition from Chambers 20th Century Dictionary). Although my day job involves me in the use of assessment and e-assessment, the theorising in this blog and elsewhere is just an interest. Most of my paid employment is involved in the nitty-gritty of producing and running OU modules, and managing the work of 50 or so of the OU’s part-time associate lecturers. This means that I’m grounded in reality and committed to honest evaluation (so as to do the best we can for our students) – but it also means I am somewhat time-poor.
So what am I likely to be blogging about next? I haven’t finished my reflections on CAA 2011 yet – there were a few more presentations at the conference that really made me sit up and think, but I want to do some more reading before saying more. Meanwhile, I have just got home from working at Open University residential school and it has made me think more about the differences between the distance-learning environment that I usually operate in, and the situation when working with students face-to-face . I’ve also got some more to say about the feedback we receive in everyday life, and about the impact of exams. And I’m sure I haven’t reported all my findings on student engagement with assessment – perhaps I ought to check.
I doubt I’ll carry on this blog for ever, but I don’t think I’m going to run out of things to say just yet!