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Take a Picture of Religion

This project critically evaluated the effectiveness and wider applicability of a creative and collaborative assessment activity included in the new OU Religious Studies module A227 ‘Exploring religion: places, practices, texts and experiences’ (TMA01), presented for the first time in October 2017. This new form of assessment aimed to develop students’ visual perception and presentation skills and required them to engage critically and creatively with different understandings of a key concept (in this case, the concept of ‘religion’).

In preparation for this assignment students were asked to submit and discuss a picture they took of ‘religion’ in their locality and share and comment on their picture (and other students’ pictures) using the OpenStudio Design online platform. The assignment in question is divided into two parts. Part ‘a’ (50%, 500 words) asked students to explain why the picture they chose is interesting (in what way it can be regarded as representing something ‘religious’ and why it is worthy of further study). Part ‘b’ (50%, 500 words) asked students to reflect on their experience of the ‘Take a picture of religion activity’. Students were expected to comment on how their understanding of the concept of religion was informed by engaging with the other images, other students’ comments, and what they found challenging or interesting about the activity. (Accessible alternatives were available for this assignment. Those unable to take their own pictures chose from a bank of photos provided by the module team; also students uploading pictures to OpenStudio were asked to include image descriptions, which supported their accessibility. Students in secure environments were sent a print version of the bank of images.) 

The A227 Module Team ran a scholarship project as part of the first presentation of A227 in 17J in order to investigate how students and tutors experienced this new form of assessment and critically evaluate the extent to which it effectively developed students’ criticality, creativity and employability skills. In particular, this project focused on how digital technology can be used to effectively facilitate creative, multisensory learning experiences in higher education at a distance. The analysis engaged with scholarly literature exploring the value of multi-sensory learning in higher education (see, for example, Chaterjee and Hannan, ed., 2015) and in particular, creativity and critique in online learning (see: Baxter, Callaghan and McAvoy, ed., forthcoming; Watts and Blessinger, eds., 2017). The project built on previous research led by project co-lead Stefanie Sinclair, critically evaluating the benefits and challenges of the assessment of digitally recorded oral presentations (see: Sinclair, 2014; Sinclair, 2016; Sinclair, forthcoming). 

This project involved the dissemination of online surveys to A227 students and tutors after students had completed and received their tutors’ feedback on TMA01 and completed all assessed and unassessed activities involving the Open Studio platform on this module (i.e. in April/May 2018) as well as the analysis of students’ OpenStudio submissions, sample assignments (with 15 examples of assignments with high scores, 15 with medium scores, and 15 that scored low) and tutor feedback on the PT3 forms linked to these assignments. The findings of this project were used to improve assessment design and share insights gained through this project with other module teams at the OU and beyond. 

On the basis of the project findings, a number of conference papers and publications have been produced. These include: 

Maiden, John and Sinclair, Stefanie (2018) ‘Personalised and multi-sensory approaches to engaging students at a distance: A case study from Religious Studies’ in Josep M. Duart and András Szűcs (eds) Towards Personalized Guidance and Support for Learning, Proceedings of the 10th European Distance and E-Learning Network Research Workshop, EDEN, Barcelona, pp. 261-269. ISBN 978-615-5511-25-7 [Online] http://www.eden-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/RW10_2018_Barcelona_Proceedings.pdf 

Sinclair, S. and Maiden, J.  (2020) ‘Take a picture of religion: Engaging students in the multisensory study of lived religion’, JBASR: Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions, Vol. 22 (Visualising Cultures), pp. 122-37. [Online] Take a picture of religion: Engaging students in the multisensory study of lived religion | Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion (JBASR)