New skills and assessment

Observing other people at their work is a luxury. Over the past few months I have indulged in listening and watching fellow academics and colleagues presenting their recent ideas in a variety of different places, from the Association of Art Historians Annual Conference in Glasgow and the GI events still going on in the city to the more immediate work-related discussions revolving around GSA’s Sustainability programme and home-related business of child care and child development teaching at my local nursery. I consider these observations as luxuries because I am always conscious that it’s not me who has to do the work, yet I gain so much from listening to the products of someone else’s imagination and labour. Of course, some of this has been dull – especially in the work-a-day sense of “here is what I have been working on”, “here are my ideas for how we can do this differently”. However, the point is that, like everyone else, I rarely have the chance to take time to listen to other people’s ideas (apart from our students, of course) in a way that does not impinge on my own work or make demands on my own time. Much of the indulgences over the past few weeks will contribute to my own research and my own teaching, so it was not “time wasted”.

Any of my colleagues reading this will, no doubt, find it hard to imagine that the PGcert course could provide anything by way of “luxury” but the requirements of the course have led me to consider the skills that we acquire through the luxury of listening. So, yesterday, I had the luxury of “observing” my PGcert colleague, Robert, in a group session with his students in architecture. Although I was actively “observing”, I was not required to speak nor was I obliged to make any contribution to the group discussion – this was a luxury. Listening to Robert and his students made me think about my group discussions with students and how I behave as a tutor; not in any specific way but, perhaps, prompted me to imagine how group contact can be a hugely important facilitator of self-and peer assessment, often without any visible “structural” imposition. This “observation” also prompted me to think about this blog and how I have neglected this and my colleagues’ blogs over the months since the course began. Perhaps, as a new skill, its demands have obscured the benefits it might afford, like the group discussion or the conference seminar. Looking at both Robert’s and Cynthia’s recent blogs made me envious that they had found time to listen to themselves, even though it may be only as a course requirement. Cynthia’s thoughts on teaching different students different techniques and Robert’s comments on how his workload and pace of work make it a constant struggle to commit to the reading tasks of the course, highlight how significantly we all assess ourselves all of the time. Rather than negatively assessing ourselves, however, it might be better to accept the “indulgence” of self-assessment as a positive new skill with a range of benefits.

With this in mind, I will attach on the next post notes from my recent readings around the subject of assessment.