Think differently about assessing learning in the workplace (Video)

7 Oct 2011

UPDATED. Visit the Centre for Work and Learning website and view video of the presentations:

Pauline Armsby

Asher Rospigliosi

Higher education practitioners should be prepared to think differently about how they assess learning in the workplace. In a seminar held by the Sussex Learning Network in Brighton yesterday, Dr Pauline Armsby, Director of Research at Westminster Exchange, part of the University of Westminster and Asher Rospigliosi of the Business and ELearning Research Group in the Brighton Business School demonstrated a number of creative assessment methods they had tried.

Pauline focussed on the challenges of assessing artefacts, products and practices as opposed to the traditional piece of extended writing. This was particularly useful for those engaged in learning at work, whether that be work-based or workplace learning.

This sort of assessment would often figure in a claim by a learner for APEL (Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning). The necessary process of analysing what one had done and had learnt from it could lead to what Pauline termed a “professional identity shift”.

A number of key issues in deciding how to assess a product or practice created as part of work experience emerged. Very often a learner was able to produce an excellent output but would need guidance on how to analyse what they had learnt from the process. In the case of artefacts, there was debate as to whether it should be the value created which should be assessed (and then only in context) or the method used in the creation. Very often, what was presented for assessment would be a joint endeavour and the claims of the individual needed to be separated out.

Asher's focus was on a particular form of assessment he had used with business students where they had used Twitter to synthesise their thoughts on an academic paper. How often they had tweeted as well as the quality of what they had tweeted contributed to their assessment. The method had a further benefit in that it taught the students the way to engage with marketing using social networking in a format that they, as young adults, had mostly not used. It may seem surprising but, according to Asher, Twitter is rarely used by young people in the UK. Its use in this country is more prevalent among working professionals.

A final cautionary note was sounded that using such methods would be challenged in the academic world by external examiners and that lecturers wishing to use such methods to validate learning in the workplace should be prepared to robustly defend these new methods.

Download Pauline Armsby's presentation (pdf 609 KB)

Download Asher Rospigliosi's presentation (pdf 422 KB)