The teaching team
Four tutors, from very different teaching backgrounds and with varying experience in university teaching, worked alongside the unit coordinator over nine tutorial groups with a total enrolment of 240 students. Lectures were conducted by the unit coordinator who also worked with two tutorial groups. Tutors were responsible for facilitating the other two-hour tutorials and marking the assessments for their groups. In this context, extensive collaboration was required to maintain authentic and reliable assessment.
One of the teaching approaches advocated in this unit was constructivism because as DeVries and Zan (1994) claim (Jensen & Kiley, 2005), it engages learners' interests, inspires active experimentation, and fosters cooperation. The team modelled how active, engaging, authentic, and collaborative learning opportunities result in the construction of knowledge and understanding. Teaching in a constructivist framework requires an alignment of teaching methods, assessment and classroom climate to support students acquiring the skills and understandings necessary for effective teaching and learning (Biggs, 2001).
With such diverse backgrounds, knowledge and understanding within the team, there was a need to develop a common understanding regarding the assessment tasks themselves, as well as fair standards of professional judgments of student mastery of the tasks. This can be time-consuming and challenging. EDL1201 used the process of developing rubrics for the assessment tasks, a strategy that assisted the team to develop common understandings.
