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PROJECT ASSESSMENT AS AN INTEGRATED PART OF THE
LEARNING PROCESS IN THE PROBLEMBASED AND
PROJECTORIENTED STUDY AT AALBORG UNIVERSITY
Assistant lecturer Søren Hansen, Aalborg University
Luhmann’s operative constructivism
The Psychologically
system 1
Feedback:
Thoughts
and
Psychologically
System
feelings
•E.g. the student or the supervisor
•The system constructs it’s own version of the outside world
•The complexity of the outside world is reduced by increasing the
systems own complexity
Luhmann’s operative constructivism
The Psychologically
system 2
Feedback:
Thoughts
and
Psychologically
System
feelings
•The complexity of the outside world is reduced by making
decisions.
•Making decisions implies knowledge about distinctions in the
outside world.
•Knowledge is the ability to make distinctions.
Luhmann’s operative constructivism
The Social
system
Feedback:
Communication
Social
System
•E.g. the student and the supervisor
discussing the students project
Luhmann’s operative constructivism
Communication
Psychologically
System
Social
System
Psychologically
System
Feedback:
Thoughts
Feedback:
Observable
Observable
Thoughts
and
Feedback:
and
feelings
Communication
feelings
The question is what kind of communication is the
most helpful when the psychological systems want
to understand each other ?
Schön’s reflection - in - action 1
Reframing
Supervisor
Student
Backtalk
•Use exemplars to create redundancy in the communication.
•The supervisor shifts between telling and demonstrating - The
student between listening and imitating.
•The supervisor must be an expert for the student to imitate in a
reflective manner.
Schön’s reflection - in - action 2
Reframing
Supervisor
Student
Backtalk
•Reflection - in - action involves on - the - spot experiments.
•On - the - spot experiments can be “move testing”.
•The student must learn “reflection - in - action” as a way of
solving problems as well as a way of communicate.
Characteristics of the dialog between
the supervisor and the student
• It must be redundant (E.g. by use us exemplars).
• It must be reflective.
• It must be based on confidence between the supervisor and the student.
• It must be based on the students inquiry - not the supervisors.
• The supervisor must be an expert the student can imitate reflectively.
The dialog during the project period
Contingence
Supervisor
Double contingent communication
Learning
objectives
Student
Time
Consequences for the project evaluation design
• Supervision is a communicative process with the aim to reduce the
contingence in the communications
• Evaluation is an ongoing process throughout the project period (where
did we come from ? And Where are we going ?)
• The project evaluation can not be distinguished from supervision and
should be treated as a normal meeting between the supervisor and the
student
• Marking must be based on the students ability to participate in the social
system (by raising good questions and discussing their answer)
• The external examiner will have a hard time following the discussions
An example from a case study at Aalborg University
• During the project period the students work on a paper called
“Dynamic learning objectives” where they list the questions they are
working on
• The students submit their project report
• After that they prepare a presentation based on their dynamic learning
objectives
• The project evaluation is carried out as a discussion of the project
taking the students questions as a starting point
Results from the case study
• The students reflections are improved.
• The responsibility for the study are experienced as mutual between the
supervisor and the student.
• The students learning process is put into focus by concentrating the
inquiry on the students own questions.
• Assessment is an ongoing process during the semester.
• The students are marked with respect to the quality of the questions
they want to discuss together with their ability to discuss them.
• Both the supervisor and the external examiner have to get used to this
way of assessing students. (They lose control of the situation).
• Reflection is a time consuming activity.