Assessment

On this module students complete one assignment, a Student-Devised Assessment, that supports students in improving their understanding of how to apply imagination, by engaging with theory, reflection, conversation, and practice. The assessment has been designed to support their learning and to give them the opportunity to bring the topics they have been exploring, and that are meaningful to them, together in a project.

The students are asked to consider how they can bring together their own interests and the requirements of the project within an institutional setting. The project that the students create should be reflective and demonstrate critical engagement and it is essential that students clearly state the intentions of the project. They are encouraged to be as creative and imaginative as they like, and to choose a ‘form’ for the project which supports and furthers the ideas they have been exploring.

Taking Marshall McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message, the design of this module is an invitation for students to consider the relationship between form and content. In a traditional academic essay, the form often involves writing with an academic authorial voice, not using personal pronouns, structuring arguments in particular ways. Through the ‘genre’ of the academic essay, certain ideas are asserted about the nature of ‘valuable’ ‘good’ knowledge and who can develop, discover, or share it. However, in this student devised assessment, the students are invited to choose the form of their assessment, mindful of the ways in which the form invites them as the creator, and their readers, to understand the ideas they are sharing.