Reflections on SAPHE

In this article from the launch issue of Directions (Autumn 2000) Keith Stanton (University of Bristol) and Barbara Lee (Southampton Institute) reflect on the three year SAPHE project and progress since it ended in 1999.

The Self Assessment in Professional and Higher Education project (SAPHE), funded by the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning, aimed to explore how self and peer assessment could be used to enhance student learning within two different contexts – law and social work.

During the post SAPHE era the law faculty at Bristol has been heavily involved in revising its LLB curriculum. The revision was called for by a number of factors, and the opportunity has been taken to devise a curriculum which explicitly takes on board the benchmark standards for law and their demands for the integration of the teaching of transferable skills into law degrees. The result is a curriculum which allocates primary responsibility for developing transferable skills to different units and which, to the extent that it is possible, attempts to achieve progressive development of these skills over the course of the student’s career.
 
Some of the tools developed as part of the SAPHE project have been adapted and refined further as we have piloted the use of exercises intended for use in the new programme. Self assessment seems likely to prove of particular use in developing team work, oral presentation and written skills.
 
Although it may be difficult to describe the process which has happened this year as a continuation of SAPHE, the new phase of development which we have moved into is one which has clearly been informed by the SAPHE process. Indeed, it may be thought to be significant that the long term outcome of such development projects spins off in all sorts of unforeseen but important directions. The capacity to achieve a worthwhile result in relation to the revised curriculum has been assisted greatly by the fact that SAPHE left us with a team of staff who had several years experience of working together on educational development. The SAPHE project produced a culture in the department which meant that a curriculum review and the demands of benchmarking could be approached positively as an opportunity to develop a syllabus which should be a significant improvement on the previous one.

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Keith Stanton, University of Bristol

To be reflective is a process not a product. We started the SAPHE project with the idea of student portfolios, in which students could write and record their reflections on the learning process. When students rejected that idea we had to consider more deeply what is involved in encouraging students to reflect on their work. It is not a ‘product’ that one can attach to a course – rather it is a process in which reflective approaches to study permeate.
 
Starting with a few first year units we looked at the ways in which we could get students to evaluate their work and to recognise and build on their skills and abilities. This started a slow process in which gradually more colleagues became involved in reviewing their teaching strategies and considering how to build a more reflective approach to study into their units. This year we went through revalidation of our degrees. Colleagues have had to grapple with the learning outcome approach, benchmarks and generic learning descriptors, provoking many discussions about how skills are developed and what we look for in assessment. This in turn builds into the clearer marking criteria necessary to the student wanting to evaluate their work.
 
In these ways we now have a far better environment in which to encourage a reflective approach. In the first year of the degree all units have a strategy for building student skills of self evaluation. It also plays a core part in two units, legal contexts, which involves problem-based learning, and ‘the professional advisor’, which involves elements of self evaluation and career planning. In subsequent years a number of units now use research diaries and other forms of reflective logs and exercises with students to make the process of planning and evaluating transparent.
 
At the end of the SAPHE project we ran a series of exit interviews. It was fascinating to see how deeply students reflected on their learning process, and demonstrated two things. One was that students were ready to accept a mentor who helps the reflective process. The other was that problems of staff and student interaction have a complexity that questionnaires cannot get to. Next year we plan to run focus groups with our first year students to see whether we should try to revisit our wish to make the personal tutor into an academic mentor, and if so how we should approach it. Our attempts to do this in the project were rejected, as students perceive us a part of an on-going ‘reflective portfolio’ approach. Indeed we were ‘product’ orientated. What we now hope to do is to take our changed view of reflection as a ‘process’ and see if we can agree the outlines of a more helpful tutoring system with our students to provide another layer of support as they develop as reflective learners.

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Barbara Lee, Southampton Institute

Last Modified: 9 July 2010