FDTL – Assessing Group Practice

Workshop Materials

E 9. AGB

Exercise: Negotiating Assessment Criteria for Interdisciplinary Practice

Simon Persighetti Catriona Scott

Dartington College of ArtsDartington College of Arts

Rationale:
This third session to a whole day event is designed to explore criteria and potential modes of assessment for interdisciplinary collaboration. Students/participants are asked to identify:
- development of critical language
- application of negotiation skills
- issues of peer assessment
- evaluation of methods and strategies
“[The] process of negotiation encourages an openness in the assessment procedures as well as ensuring ownership on the part of the student.”
From Self and Peer Assessment and Accreditation of Practical Work document, King Alfred’s College Winchester
“ A convention is an agreement. When it is applied it filters out what does not correspond to the criteria…Its effectivity is above all due to the fact that it is repeated, not that its sense is understood. [When artworks] challenge conventions…[they] can work with everything which conventions usually exclude or suppress.”
Daniel Kurjakovic
From ‘Theoretical note’, Other Rooms Other Voices: Audio Works by Artists, ed. Kurjakovic, D., Lohse, S., p. 127
Suitable for:
Academic Staff, students and administrators involved with assessment. Minimum 6 and maximum 20.
Timings:
90 minutes total.
Small group exercise 30 minutes
Whole group discussion 30 minutes
Debriefing with observers/reporters 30 minutes

Facilitators:

The workshop should be led by a supervisor to:

- lead the exercises

- chair discussions

- manage the time

- nominate observer/reporters

The role of observers/reporters would be to monitor:

- Verbal and non-verbal interactions

- The management of conflicting or differing views

- Make note of connections between fields, concepts, ideas

- identify implications for the assessment of interdisciplinary practice

Resources needed:
Chairs
Flip Charts
Marker pens

Running the Workshop:

Stage 1. Small group exercise (30 minutes)

- Think about the range of ways in which effective understanding, application and

evaluation of the processes identified in the final part of Merging Maps of

Interdisciplinary Practice might most appropriately be assessed.

- How might the skills involved in the

selection/manipulation/shaping/refining/presentation of materials in context be

assessed in interdisciplinary work?

- Draw a map/template identifying those processes and skills that are integral to

successful interdisciplinary work, and suggest effective assessment modes for

them.

Stage 2. Whole group discussion (30 minutes)

Share the models/templates developed in the small groups. With these models in mind, consider the specific criteria that might have been appropriately used to assess individual participants in the activities undertaken in the first two workshop sessions.

This might include participation in:

- discussions

- mapping fields

- merging maps

- proposal presentations

Stage 3: Debriefing (30 minutes)

Invite OBSERVERS/REPORTERS to contribute an overview of the workshop proceedings, including observations of:

- verbal and non-verbal interactions

- the management of conflicting or differing views

- emerging connections between fields

- implications for the assessment of interdisciplinary practice

Guidance notes and recommendations:

As part of the de-briefing session it might be possible to give the group(s) feedback on their presentations by adopting the criteria and assessment modes that they have devised or negotiated.
Variations:
For a more extended workshop timetable, this session can be followed with the exercise Testing Interdisciplinary Practice which includes an active group
Performance assignment.

Bibliography:

Barthes, R. (1977) Image Music Text, London: Harper Collins
Barthes, R., Havas, R. (1976) ‘Listening’ Other Rooms Other Voices: Audio Works by Artists,
ed. Kurjakovic, D., Lohse, S. (1999), Zurich: Memory/Cage
Broadhurst, S. (1999) Liminal Acts, London: Cassell
Burroughs, W. (1985) The Adding Machine: Collected Essays, London: John Calder
Goulish, M. (2000) Thirty-nine Microlectures, London: Routledge
Hughes, D. (1996)Collaboration: Process or Product, Means or End, Democracy or Demagogy? Performing Arts International, Vol. 1, part 1, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers
Kurjakovic, D. ‘Theoretical Note’, Other Rooms Other Voices: Audio Works by Artists,
ed. Kurjakovic, D., Lohse, S. (1999), Zurich: Memory/Cage
Lepecki, A.(1996) As If Dance Was Visible, Performance Research Volume 1, No.3 1996 – On Illusion – London: Routledge

Simon Persighetti

Catriona Scott

FDTL - Assessing Group Practice

First delivered 7.11.2001