Academic integrity and production pedagogies: Towards transformative assessment with digital technologies
(Jan Petrus Bosman, Magriet de Villiers, Elzette le Roux; Stellenbosch University)
Transformative pedagogy, of which transformative assessment is an example, is regarded as a discourse community within which different critical approaches – such as ‘liberatory pedagogy’, ‘critical pedagogy’, ‘critical enquiry’ and ‘critical reflection’ form part of (Tolgfors, 2019). Emancipation as an approach to education is an underpinning notion of critical pedagogy. Assessment is integral to learning and teaching and provides opportunity to learners to experience how their discipline makes a real difference in their lives (Tolgfors, 2019). Transformative assessment challenges the predominant culture of assessment – individual criteria compliance – and invites critical engagement and learner influence to involve a collective understanding produced through collaborative educational experience (Tolgfors, 2019).
This workshop aims to uncover the notions of academic integrity and production pedagogies (participants are expected to present a digitally created artefact for assessment purposes) as approaches in considering transformative assessment practices towards social justice in African digital contexts. Designing assessment for academic integrity asks that we design assessments, not to establish whether learners are cheating, but provide opportunity for them to demonstrate what they have learned. Using production pedagogy, learners can build knowledge through embodied engagement and learn through purposeful making (Castells, 2016). Real-world objects and technology artifacts with social worth and meaning to the learners who are the makers, are combined (Yanez, 2019). Through the experience of academic integrity and production pedagogy examples, participants in the workshop will explore how transformative assessment practices in their own contexts can become a vehicle for social justice in African digital contexts.
Teaching academics and teaching support staff that are interested in addressing issues of transformation in assessment practices via aspects related to academic integrity and/or the implementation of production pedagogies are invited to attend and participate. It is expected of participants to bring a wi-fi enabled laptop/device to the workshop.
References:
De Castell, S. (2016), ‘A pedagogy of production: An Introduction to new media modules’, [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/181978126.
Tolgfors, B. (2019). Transformative assessment in physical education. European Physical Education Review, 25(4), 1211-1225. https://doi.org/10.1177/1356336X18814863
Yanez, G. A., Thumlert, K., de Castell, S., & Jenson, J. (2019). Pathways to sustainable futures: A “production pedagogy” model for STEM education. Futures, 108(July 2018), 27–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2019.02.021
Dr Jan Petrus Bosman is Director of the Centre for Learning Technologies (CLT) at Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa. He trained and taught in the field of Theology at SU before becoming involved in academic development work. After working at the Centre for Teaching and Learning at SU as well as a start-up educational software company, he became Head and later Director of the CLT, a Centre that spearheads and supports SU’s strategies for the use of ICT in Learning and Teaching. His teaching and research interests are around instructional- and learning design, blended- and hybrid learning, m-learning literacy, graduate attributes, the digital scholar, teaching in the digital world and more recently the Scholarship of Educational Leadership. He is also currently a PhD student looking at the role of AI technologies in the academic advising process.
Ms Magriet de Villiers is the Learning Technologies Advisor of the Centre for Learning Technologies (CLT) at Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa. She studied and taught in the field of Theology at SU. She took up the position as the Faculty of Theology’s Blended Learning Coordinator, and later that of the Academic Development Coordinator. She is currently the Learning Technologies Advisor at CLT and provides support for the institutional use of ICT in Learning and Teaching. Her teaching and research interests centre on the pedagogy of discomfort, academic development strategies, instructional- and learning design, and blended- and hybrid learning.
Ms Elzette le Roux works as an advisor in the Centre for Learning Technologies at Stellenbosch University. Her focus is mainly on online learning design, including digital pedagogies for the online learning environment. Elzette holds a LLM in Constitutional Law from the University of Pretoria, an honours degree in Psychology from the University of South Africa and an LLB degree from the Northwest University, Potchefstroom. In 2021 Elzette completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Higher Education (for Academic Developers) at Rhodes University. Her teaching and research interests include digital pedagogies in the online learning environment, the importance of assessment in student learning, academic and professional development, learning and assessment and the development of Open Education Resources.