Cristin-resultat-ID: 2029635
Sist endret: 8. juni 2022, 16:27
Resultat
Vitenskapelig foredrag
2022

Re-establishing a learning focused evaluation practice

Bidragsytere:
  • Iris Borch og
  • Ragnhild Sandvoll

Presentasjon

Navn på arrangementet: ICED conference
Sted: Århus
Dato fra: 2. juni 2022
Dato til: 2. juni 2022

Arrangør:

Arrangørnavn: International Consortium for Educational Development

Om resultatet

Vitenskapelig foredrag
Publiseringsår: 2022

Klassifisering

Vitenskapsdisipliner

Andre pedagogiske fag

Emneord

Universitets- og høgskolepedagogikk

Beskrivelse Beskrivelse

Tittel

Re-establishing a learning focused evaluation practice

Sammendrag

Introduction Educational reforms in higher education since the 1980s have been criticized because they contain steering principles as managerialism and neoliberalism. These reforms are said to challenge traditional understandings of educational quality and the independency of academic teachers. Educational evaluation is an example of how a historically academic self-driven pedagogical tool for educational development has shifted towards an external tool for control and accountability governed by university management or external agencies. In Norwegian higher education where this study takes place, student evaluation has become a mandatory activity that regularly is audited by an external agency for quality assurance, NOKUT. This paper argues that student course evaluation is a pedagogical tool and therefore should be included to a greater extent in curriculum design and constructive alignment. Academic developers are suggested as central actors in reconceptualizing student course evaluation as pedagogical practice that teachers have ownership of, and in helping teachers gaining insights about student learning processes. Research methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with academic leaders from eight profession education programs at one Norwegian university. In addition, document analysis of evaluation templates, evaluation policy and educational quality documents at the same university were conducted. Results The study found several organizational dimensions with student evaluation practice limiting the opportunity for evaluation to be an integrated part of students’ learning processes and to be actively used for educational improvements. Some possible explanations were found in the development and communication of quality assurance system and the evaluation guidelines which academics were expected to follow. The guidelines were developed and communicated by administrative staff on behalf of the university management. Academics seemed to have a low sense of ownership to these guidelines and were left to themselves in carrying out evaluation. The academics expressed a need for more support, knowledge, dialogue about evaluations and better evaluation systems. Academic developers had no formal role in the evaluation practice, neither in development of evaluation procedures nor as support for academic staff at the university. It is up to the academics to decide which evaluation method to use. Written evaluation methods were the dominating ICED 2022 Conference Sustainable Educational Development evaluation practice, but different dialogue-based methods were used for some courses. Many of the written evaluations were teaching oriented asking non-specific questions about satisfaction with teaching, which could not be used for educational improvement. The dialogue-based evaluations had a more open format and invited students to dialogue about what facilitated and inhibited their learning. Discussions and conclusions There is a potential to include a student learning focus in evaluation practice. We suggest including evaluation in constructive alignment and use the term “system alignment” proposed by Edstrom (2008) to illustrate this. Academic developers may be central change agents in including evaluation in constructive alignment. We aim to invite conference participants in discussions about how the formative purposes of student course evaluation can be strengthened in higher education and the role academic developers may have in supporting teacher’s agency in evaluation processes and in re-establishing evaluation as central part of pedagogical practices.

Bidragsytere

Iris Helene Borch

Bidragsyterens navn vises på dette resultatet som Iris Borch
  • Tilknyttet:
    Forfatter
    ved Senter for helsefaglig ped utvikling ved UiT Norges arktiske universitet

Ragnhild Sofie Sandvoll

Bidragsyterens navn vises på dette resultatet som Ragnhild Sandvoll
  • Tilknyttet:
    Forfatter
    ved UiT Norges arktiske universitet
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