JISC

Summary

The FAST project aims to pilot a module which utilises technology more effectively in assessment and feedback to ensure that assessment activities are more relevant to employment needs and that learners develop skills which are more in tune with today’s challenges and work/life contexts.

The aim of FAST is to help drive up the quality of technology-enhanced assessment and feedback methods to meet 21st century skills needs for enterprise and employability.  Using existing technologies, this project will help to accelerate the development and embedding of transferable technologies within assessment and feedback strategies which in turn enhance the pedagogy through stimulation of enterprising behaviour and adds value to the learners’ experience and employability. 

Cornwall College believe that ‘What you assess is what you get’, so we need to make sure that what we assess is what employers need.  Hence, the basis of this project lies in the need to bring assessment and feedback methods up-to-date, to widen access to higher education and to bring the institution up-to-date in terms of utilising technology to enhance pedagogy.

Cornwall College’s Faculty of Business, Enterprise and IT (BEIT) delivers a Personal & Employability Skills Development (PESD) module which is delivered on a horizontal basis to all FD programmes across the Institution. This is a single module studied by over 700 first year students on 43 different Foundation Degrees (FDs) across seven campuses.  This project will be piloted to the c. 50 students within the BEIT faculty at Camborne. The module focuses on encouraging students to start planning for and working towards their future career from day one of their FD.

The FAST project will pilot the delivery of this module in the BEIT faculty at the Camborne campus initially, to encourage the use of existing technology in assessment and feedback activities.
The project will be supported by Hull College who as project partner will assist in the baseline review, testing and critical analysis. Following evaluation of the pilot, the strategy will then be amended as appropriate and rolled out for that module to other parts of the college, and offered to other institutions.

Objectives

Overall Objective:

• To develop and embed a corporate Assessment and Feedback strategy which incorporates technology-enhanced features throughout assessment practices, complementary to the emerging corporate ILT strategy. The initial outline strategy will be ready for piloting by February 2012, and a revised strategy following evaluation of the pilot will be in place by January 2013, in readiness for internal roll-out and external transportation and dissemination as appropriate.

Detailed Objectives:

• To pilot technology-enhanced assessment and feedback methods in a faculty which has a key employer engagement role. This will be piloted from February 2012.
• To provide guidance, technical support and capacity if/where appropriate for staff/students to deliver the Assessment and Feedback strategy. This will be in place from February 2012.
• To evaluate the pilot and roll out the strategy for the PESD module on a cross-college basis. Evaluation will be ongoing throughout the project. Roll-out will take place from March 2013.
• To develop CPD learning packages from scratch for transporting the approach as a model to other Institutions for potential adoption. These will be developed on an ad hoc basis but they will all be in place by March 2013.
  To share/disseminate project findings and outcomes. This will take place intermittently as findings are published and at the conclusion of the project.
   

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• Baseline Report describing existing assessment & feedback practice
• Project Case Study
• A regularly updated project progress blog which can be electronically harvested;
• Longitudinal attitude user survey
• 2 Embedding Workshops (baseline investigation and testing) and 1 Transferability Workshop;
• An evaluation report
• Dissemination and active engagement with the wider community to communicate key messages from the project and promote take-up of the approach;
• Quarterly updates, annual interim reports, and a final report.

Project Blog

http://fastcornwall.wordpress.com/blog-page/