Goldsmiths - University of London

Context

Building a prototype system (d&t)

In e-scape phase 1 we had been able to establish that the use of digital peripheral tools could enable learners to create authentic, real-time, web-portfolios of their performance. The value of peripheral tools lay in their 'back-pocket' potential. Learners were not tied to desktops and work-stations, but could roam the studio / workshop as they normally would in designing mode. The peripheral digital tools enabled them to build an authentic story of their designing through a combination of drawings; photos; voice files and text. Their story emerged as the trace-left-behind by their purposeful activity in the task.

We had shown the potential of these tools - separately - in capturing designing activity, but we had not integrated them into a complete system. This became the focus of e-scape phase 2.

Brief

Building a prototype system (d&t)

The e-scape phase 1 report concluded with an analysis of the specification of a prototype system that could theoretically facilitate the creation of real-time web-portfolios direct from the workshop/classroom. The brief in phase 2 - in association with technology suppliers and Awarding Bodies - was to construct this system as a working prototype that could be used in a school pilot with approximately 20 schools.

Methodology

E-scape phase 2 involved building and testing a prototype system in which learners undertake a design coursework activity in the classroom (using hand-held digital tools) and their resulting portfolio emerges automatically (and dynamically as they work) in a website where is can be displayed for assessment purposes.

The first year of the project was focused on two things:

• technical system development to enable the dynamic links between learners (doing the activity) , teachers (running the activity) , web-servers (managing and storing the communications), and the portfolio repository (to display the resulting portfolios).
• developing appropriate assessment activities along with all the associated resources to make them work effectively in design studios and workshops throughout the country.

The second year of the project was focussed on running the pilot in 11 schools during June/July 2006, and accumulated 250 portfolios in the website. The assessment of these portfolios involved the development of a completely new methodology that was only possible because of the web-based nature of the work. The new approach 'differentiated pairs' (Thurstone 1927) enabled a small team of judges to assess all the work with very high reliability - far higher than is normally possible with such qualitative assessment.

Outcomes

The outcomes of e-scape phase 2 were essentially of three kinds:

i) concerning the classroom activity: We established that e-scape activities of this kind could operate successfully in school workshops and studios. In every school the activity ran successfully and in the process it became evident that learners were very enthusiastic about operating in this way as part of their normal project-work.

ii) concerning the technology: We established that the technology underpinning the e-scape system was reliable and manageable. The system operated from hand-held devices in the classroom through secure web-servers and learners' portfolios successfully emerged in the web-space.

iii) concerning the assessment process: We established that the comparative pairs methodology operated very effectively. It proved to be very manageable at the judging end of the process, and it yielded astonishingly reliable results at the outcome.

The overall outcome of e-scape phase 2 was that QCA, DfES, and Awarding Bodies realised that we had built a system that had the potential radically to transform the operation of performance assessment in schools. Moreover it became clear that the system was capable of adaptation to performances of all kinds - not just designing.

It was these two realisations that created the brief for e-scape phase 3.