It can be both liberating and challenge to see our work as Educational Developers 'from the other side'. While I am typically involved in (and very much enjoy) facilitating workshops and other sessions, I was given the unique opportunity this month to attend the inaugural Waterloo Assessment Institute. Hosted by the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, this institute was designed to offer intensive, facilitated training around how we assess learning across disciplines and contexts. As an Educational Developer, I don't work directly with students but gained considerable insight into how our work in assessment fundamentally impacts course design and, ultimately, student success.
The institute modeled much of its schedule and activities around familiar programming such as the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW), which I have engaged with as both a participant and facilitator. What was unique to this experience, however, was the opportunity to receive feedback on an assignment or learning activity without directly facilitating the activity for participants to engage in. At times, an ISW experience (or something similar) can be challenging when we are able to only display the final product of our design process (the lesson itself) without being able to share insights into our processes and thinking. At the institute, this 'behind the scenes' process was, in fact, the intensive focus for the two day session. We were able to present the activity broken down into its component parts alongside its broader philosophical and pedagogical underpinnings. Working within a small group meant several rounds of thoughtful, detailed feedback accompanied these discussions, with several blocks of time devoted to immediate action on the feedback we received.
One particular insight both as a participant myself and in thinking about student assessment as a whole was our grounding discussion of managing the emotional and relational aspects of feedback. As practitioners and instructors, we often consider assessment almost entirely from a transactional point of view. This isn't to say that we don't care deeply about our students and their learning experience, but the systems in which we teach and operate can overshadow the important work of using assessment as a means to build meaningful relationships with our students alongside building competency and capacity.
There was also a considerable emphasis on application in our discussions of assessment. Short sessions on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and High Impact Practices (HIPs) centered on the utility of assessment in making meaning of and for students' learning. The goal, ultimately, is to prepare students for life beyond our classrooms, such that assessment then becomes a teaching tool as much as it is a means to evaluate successful learning. How might we, for example, offer students opportunities to practice and/or develop skills that they may use in their future jobs or studies. How might our assessment strategies offer the chance to reflect on not just what they have learned but how they have learned it? It was especially refreshing and inspiring to see these ideals modeled in our own work as participants. Through feedback, consultations, and group discussions we were given ample opportunities to reflect on, integrate, and apply our learning in a way that I hope will carry forward into re visioning some of our workshop and lesson offerings.
It was encouraging to see the educational development and faculty communities come together under the shared purpose and vision of supporting student success. There is great potential in this model, whether as another institute or, at a more individual level, as a means to inspire regular, collaborative reflection on our course offerings. Modelling a means of providing effective, critical, yet collegial feedback is certainly something to aspire to both with our students and, perhaps even more so, among each other.
