This case study was produced by Aidan Arrowsmith and Siobhán Holland of the English Department, Staffordshire University, and evaluates the use of  ‘independent study exercises’ assigned to students early in the second semester of the Level 1 core module for English, ‘Approaches to Literature’. The work was undertaken for the HEFCE-funded ‘Assessment and the Expanded Text’ project.

This project was directed by the English division at the University of Northumbria and involves collaboration with colleagues who teach English courses at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of East Anglia as well as Staffordshire. Starting with the premise that assessment plays an integral role in student learning, each consortium site set out to investigate good assessment practice in a variety of aspects of the rapidly changing discipline of ‘English studies’—the focus at Staffordshire being literary theory and on-line learning and assessment. The published findings of each Consortium site are available as a series of booklets under the generic title ‘Towards a Productive Assessment Practice’. Staffordshire University’s contribution, based upon staff and student experience of these pagesets, evaluated by interviews carried out by staff from Northumbria, is entitled ‘Practising Theory On-Line’.

A full introduction to both ‘Assessment and the Expanded Text’ and the work of the Staffordshire consortium site is available, along with the booklet series ‘Towards a Productive Assessment Practice’, at The HE Academy English Subject Centre.

The COSE case study ‘Practising Theory On-Line’ can be downloaded as a pdf file.

If you came directly to this page, why not visit the COSE Project website