In my ongoing reflections about how to teach and assess social media in higher education for the training of journalists, I focus here on some of the issues surounding assessment in particular. This is a particular tricky area for universities as many lecturers do not know whether gated communities - which protect from libel, defamation and copyright issues - are the best way forward, even knowing the compromise of closing off students from the wider debate and perhaps the main thrust of the internet and the philosophy of joined up thinking.
As a lecturer at Uclan, this has formed the crux of my case study.
How to assess engagement in social media?
This paper has so far set out the context surrounding what social media tools need to be taught to maintain a vibrant and relevant curriculum within a rapidly changing journalism profession. It has also set out considerations on how these tools can be taught. The next logical question for any reflective practitioner then turns to how best to assess engagement in social media. This is, as yet, an area which would benefit from extensive further research.
There is compelling evidence in the assessment structures within JoMec that there is a need to address a fundamental shift towards a student empowered environment. Journalism students are currently asked to keep all social media tools such as blogs, which are to be used for course content creation or assessment, as closed access. Students are prevented from using microblogging tools within guest lectures and advised against posting work on public publishing tools such as Issuu. However, ask any lecturer within the school and they do not really understand why this is – a reflection which prompted this paper. Even advice from Aquasu is patchy: the guidelines currently in place are only vaguely relevant (the regulations deemed relevant to this paper concerned Conduct of Students, the use of IT facilities, Personal Internet Presence and Unfair Means to Enhance Performance). Frustratingly, decisions about how best to proceed with assessment hinge on unravelling the universities responsibilities in light of confidentiality in assessment, as well as how best to deal with plagiarism, copyright and privacy. According to Aquasu, the University does not have any rules relating to confidentiality in the assessment process.
Many institutions and lecturers, those at Uclan included, have reacted to the web 2.0 phenomenon by keeping student learning experiences behind firewalls or within gated communities, including blogs and wikis that are closed access. The justification for this can also centre on concerns relating to copyright infringement and plagiarism, as well as naming of sources, and the potential risks of defamation or libel. Some lecturers have also highlighted the need to preserve confidentiality in assessment. Many researchers have also advocated the need for closed, safe learning environments where learners have the chance to make ‘private’ mistakes. It is also essential to note that no lecturer can – or should – control the sources open to a student. Jomec therefore needs to unpick guidelines, in partnership with Aquasu and the Society for Research into Higher Education, SEDA and the HEA, as to what restrictions are needed and should apply to assessment. This is particularly relevant for issues of copyright – a law which is currently experiencing dominant shifts. At present, there is little evidence to suggest that, unless the student was making money from copyrighted material, prosecutions would actually take place.
With a clearer grasp of JoMec’s legal responsibilities towards assessing engagement in social media, practitioners would be in a much clearer position to work out how that assessment should take place. Opening access to social media would magnify student experience as it would harness the true ‘epochal change’ Shirky (2008) sets out for the internet age. Former Uclan undergraduate Nigel Barlow argues that ‘university regulations are restricting content creation’. As Mason and Rennie (2008 p62) argue, blogs which are restricted access can be ‘counter productive in seeking to engage with the global learning community’. And universities are handling the issue at different paces: Manchester Metropolitan University advertising and marketing students actively promote material on social video sites. Ultimately, if student work is ‘out there’ it can be seen by future employers nor can trainee journalists experience ‘real’ first hand social media – or be expected to reflect on it ahead of their professional development – if their experience has been cloistered.
However, assessing engagement in social media also has to take account of quality assurance and provide an appropriate audit trail. Assessing time sensitive live social media would be unsatisfactory for the professional journalism governing bodies as well as the internal audit processes at Uclan. If journalism practitioners involved in teaching and assessing social media are to use assessment effectively, attitudes to quality assurance and the process of judging engagement need to be rethought
Assessing process or product...
One key reflection from this paper highlights the need to differentiate whether product or process are being assessed – as different strategies will be appropriate for each. Any reflective practitioner would need to be clear on what the learning objectives are and what you are assessing, and this will need to be shaped to marry with the nature of the skill being taught. This will undoubtedly change depending on the cognitive level expected from students in varying under- or post-graduate groups. One would need to set out requirements in terms of conduct, contracts and relationships, and be clear what kind of social interaction you are expecting to take place. Just as there are different levels of cognitive exchange on platforms, there are differing methodologies for assessments. From this, values can potentially be placed on what it means to be engaged.
Rather than trying to close-off student learning and assess content production, where social media is concerned, the emphasis can shift onto assessing the process. Mason and Rennie (2008) begin an exploration of this when they discuss the changing role of quality assurance in higher education. They state that higher education needs to adapt away from the old, control-based model to the new characteristics of web 2.0 where the users are empowered with overwhelming resources and there is no central control. Conrad 1993 would argue ‘it is through discourse that individuals develop their own views of morality; and through discourse that incongruities within individual organisational value sets are managed and negotiated’.
As can be seen from the following grid, shifting emphasis away from product onto process would allow assessment to be formative or summative, and confidential. In this way - and considering the earlier differential between a private student and a trainee journalist - the actual engagement that takes place with social media becomes the student experience but the reporting of it falls into the realm of trainee journalist. For example, if a student were to Tweet from a lecture, this is part of their private brand-building (and would be governed by the Aquasu regulations). When the student uses an example of Tweets as evidence of engagement in social media, it becomes their work as a trainee journalist (and should be assessed under module learning outcomes or Jomec criteria).
As has been stated earlier, the fickle nature of social media poses a pivotal challenge for assessment strategies as it would be impractical for lecturers to have to change the resource platform for assessment every time technology changes. Elliott (2007) sets out considerations for assessment to be reshaped to embrace web 2.0. His paper Assessment 2.0 maps a combination of Live Search, RSS feeds, Furl or Clipmark, Google docs, Netvibes and Box.net being used to track a user’s experience online.
However there is still a place for using product within the teaching of social media. Assessment can valuably centre on producing social media products such as Yahoo pipes, Mashups, online newspapers on websites, or social media sites such as Ning. Here the assessment would set out to encourage content production rather than the process behind it. The department needs an urgent reappraisal of why these platforms need to stay ‘closed access’. When choosing what assessment to use to gauge engagement in social media, the examples set out in Appendix 2 may be of interest.
Assessing engagement in social media
Examples of learning objectives, assessment criteria and possible methods for assessment
LEARNING OBJECTIVE Journalism student creating a brand around their social media
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA Have they followed appropriate online guidelines on policy?
How have comments and social interaction been conducted?
What evidence of professionalism is there?
What kind of information is being circulated or exchanged by the student? Could Google their profile or ask250people.com and see what sort of profile they have ( privacy issues)
POSSIBLE ASSESSMENT STRATEGY Weekly check sheet for them to complete assessing what they have done. What are you going to try this week (get students to set the task themselves) coupled with focussed reflection each week. This could be done on a shared social space online.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE Use of social media tools
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA How have they been used, frequency
Connectivity – how do they publish, engage with others, generate and participate
Multimedia presentations such as Breeze where students present a ‘tour’ of online communities engaged with.
POSSIBLE ASSESSMENT STRATEGY Audio visual pods which can share screens and content. Could embed recordings and online conversations.
Problem-based learning - students asked to produce a presentation made up of ‘live’ links to updates on social sites and evidence of where they have engaged with it
I have more examples of marrying objectives with assessment criteria and possible assessment strategies if you need them. Any suggestions and ideas are most welcome!
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