thought I'd just mention this

little bit of reading

Approaches to the assessment of competences and personal and professional development

Burgess[i] writes:

'Self assessment' can be a way of assessing the product of learning but it is a learning process in itself. It is a way of improving student learning by passing on skills of evaluation and critical judgement to students. In this sense the term 'self evaluation' may be more appropriate since it is about developing students' ability to make judgements about the quality of material.

Thus SA can be both formative and summative.

Peer assessment can likewise be both formative and summative, and can be a useful way of enabling students to think critically about their own work. For peer assessment it is essential to develop clear guidelines about giving feedback to others.

I absolutely agree that any form of assessment is a learning process. Guidance and feedback should be framed so that the learner moves forward, setting her/his own goals for improvement and working towards these. However, what is important (and I think this is the point Burgess is making) is that any assessment needs a clear criterion based framework. This can be difficult to achieve – see table below, reproduced from Burgess (as before).

	Factors that help	Factors that hinder
Institutional context	e.g. good induction programme for all new staff	e.g. emphasis on traditional research rather than on teaching and learning
Discipline	e.g. pressure from professional interest groups	e.g. pressure from professional interest groups
Faculty/department	e.g. internal monitoring report raises concerns about students' understanding of assessment criteria	e.g. push towards standardisation across departments
Staff group	e.g. collaborative approach	e.g. sceptical of any new developments
Student group	e.g. clear about assessment criteria	e.g. lack of confidence, unwillingness to accept 'new' approaches to assessment
Resources available	e.g. access to IT resources	e.g. room shortages

Burgess refers to an assessment tool from the University of Bristol (see below)

SELF ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR PLANNING AND REFLECTION FOR SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

University of Bristol

1 Learning Objective

2 How will you work towards this

3 How will you know about your progress

4 Progress in reaching objective

5 Evidence

6 What got in the way

7 Further work needed

I suggest that if we are trying to encourage professionals to assess their own professional competences and development, we need to ensure that a framework exists, which ties together self-assessment, peer-assessment and some original description of core competences for the context involved.

The H808 site also contains an example of self-assessment against ePractice competences.

I looked at the self-assessment example on the OU H808 site.

	How do you rate your own:	Complete Novice	Below average	Average	Above average	Expert	Comment
	Ability to xxx

The candidate had filled in the above with evidence provided and then went on to state that this particular piece of evidence was related to the following areas of competence.

	understanding	& development
	Skills	Reflection	Analysis/critique	Proactivity
Competency:
Practice
Communication
Technology
Research

The following is the grid which I developed as areas for my own portfolio:

PDP needs analysis grid – Jan Moreland

	How do you rate your own:	Yourself compared with other teachers					Comment
		Complete novice	Below average	Average	Above average	Expert
1	Ability to select appropriate content for online seminars
2	Ability to structure and sequence content of online seminars
3	Ability to create a suitable atmosphere in online seminars
4	Ability to include all students in discussion
5	Knowledge of Web 2.
6	Awareness of existing research on Web 2.
7	Understanding of how Web 2 can be used for elearning.
8	Knowledge of Social Networking.
9	Awareness of existing research on Social Networking
10	Understanding of how Social Networking can be used for elearning.
11	Steps taken to improve your teaching
12	Collaboration with teaching colleagues

What I am not clear of with the example is where the second grid came from. It seems wholly appropriate to determine one’s own areas for development and to provide evidence of progress against these. Having said that, should there be a benchmark or ‘standard’ to aim for such as the CMALT or FHEA?

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[i] Burgess, H (n.d.) Self and Peer Assessment (online), The Higher Education Academy: Social Work and Social Policy (SWAP). Available from: http://sorubank.ege.edu.tr/~bouo/DLUE/Chapter-08/Chapter-8-makaleler/Assessment%202_%20Self%20and%20peer%20assessment.htm accessed 29/11/09