Blended Assessment-4-Blended Learning

This paper is a reflection of over 25 years experience in teaching; from a purely classroom based learning environment, through the development of e-learning to a fully engaging blended learning environment that I provide my students today. Coming from an industrial background a driving force behind all my developments has been efficiency; helping students to develop their knowledge and understanding, their skills and attributes as quickly and effectively as possible, but at the same time acknowledging that my time is precious. In my early teaching I was heavily influenced by Honey and Mumford, recognising that we are all different and prefer to learn in different styles. As such I adapted my teaching styles to suite the students' preferred learning style. Later I became one of the pioneers of e-learning, helping to develop a virtual learning environment to support the students' learning outside the classroom through the internet. This naturally extended to the use of e-assessment and computer aided marking. More recently I have been advocating the use of Electronic Voting Systems to encourage greater engagement by students in the classroom through both summative and formative assessment. Whilst I have been a proponent of "Blended Learning" since before the phrase became popular, many students often see the variety of learning opportunities as "alternatives", opting out of anything they do not particularly like. Whilst this may lead to an efficient learning process in the students mind, it can also lead to an ineffective learning experience with students underachieving. Like it or not, assessment drives learning (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004), however by using a variety of appropriate assessment methods students are encouraged to actively engage in all the learning opportunities we offer them. If you want to change student learning then change the methods of assessment (Brown, Bull & Pendlebury, 1997). The key to this is selecting assessment methods that will not bury the academic in unassailable mountains of marking. This paper charts the development of my initiatives in teaching, learning and assessment, with tips and warnings coming from my experience for anyone wishing to adopt any of my methods.