Issue 10, August 2009 | Phil Keirle

 

[O]n practically every Australian campus there are growing minority movements of students and staff whose influence is greater than their numbers because they are prepared to argue publicly against all comers that the universities and the whole society need radical change.1

The Handbook owes its origin to the rise of a new attitude amongst students towards education and student participation in decision making in education.2

The quotes above come from the 1977 edition of the Alternative Arts Handbook, the third volume in a series of publications prepared by students at The University of Western Australia (‘UWA’) that were funded by the student-run Arts Union, and aimed at raising student and faculty awareness of deficiencies in teaching and learning practices at the University. These deficiencies, elaborated in greater detail below, were seen as symptomatic of the social, political and economic conservatism grounding traditional university curricula and administration. It was in this broader context that those at the helm of the Handbooks consciously identified their advocacy for change to curricula and teaching practices with radical protest and reform movements taking place on campuses nationwide; protest and reform movements that had advocated for, among other things,  greater access to university education, the cessation of conscription and Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, an end to apartheid in South Africa, equal pay for equal work and against racism of any kind at home and abroad.3  

The aim of empowering students in decision making about their education determined the content of the Handbooks, while the commitment to radical reform of those at the helm influenced the tone of the publications. The information provided in the Handbooks related to issues in tertiary education: from pedagogic problems associated with assessments, lectures and academic departments and society generally, to detailed criticisms of particular units, lecturers and tutors.4  Reliance on student feedback for such critiques entailed a constant battle against student apathy in returning course surveys and against a lack of critical feedback where surveys were returned. Thus, the feedback relied upon by Handbook editors tended to come from students who were specifically approached and known to be ‘interested personally’ in the educational issues identified in the Handbooks.5 On the basis of this reliance on a vocal and radical minority for feedback, it is hardly surprising that the tone of these publications was polemical, many of the pronouncements radical, and some of the criticisms of lecturers bordering on libelous. In spite of, or perhaps because of this ‘take no prisoners’ style, an approach which softened increasingly during the 1980s, the Alternative Arts Handbooks occupied a prominent position on campus in raising student and academic awareness of issues related to teaching and learning at the University, a position that belied general student apathy to the reform program contained in the publications.6 

The Handbooks were of course only one dimension in the emergent debates surrounding teaching and learning practices at the University during this period. Around the same time, the institutionally sponsored Research Unit in University Education recorded lectures and provided feedback to academics willing to submit themselves to the process, and through the Centre for Tertiary Education Studies, which replaced the Research Unit in the mid-eighties, a survey system was trialed that included feedback on teaching performance.7  While these institutionally-led initiatives evidenced a growing interest in the increased application of pedagogical theory to university teaching practice, they in no way resembled the comprehensive assemblage of principles and programs that guide the governance of teaching practices at universities in Australia today, UWA included.

The importance attached to, and the current ubiquity of these policies, programs and principles at the University reflect a commitment to promoting a high quality educational experience for students, and there is little doubt that this kind of institutional commitment was exactly what was sought by those at the helm of the Handbooks in the late seventies and early eighties. The presence of this institutional commitment has made, to a large extent, the existence of textual reform vehicles like the Handbooks redundant; their disappearance from campus is not surprising. This obsolescence, however, is itself worthy of note: the arch-visibility of current policies and the comprehensiveness of the integration of pedagogically grounded best practices into the administration of teaching and learning has the tendency to occlude the very recent origins of this commitment, and, in particular, the prominent and proactive role of students in mobilizing support for this kind of commitment.  The purpose of this essay is to recuperate this student voice in order to explore the different strategies through which the quality and effectiveness of teaching practices have been made visible and, to an extent, governable at the University.

The Handbooks

More and more students are beginning to view the university as more than a training ground for specialists who will simply fit into and serve society. Rather, the university is being viewed as a place to educate people so that they can critically analyse, transform and direct society…as a place to produce subversive individuals.8

The Handbook was the result of the students’ wish to decide for themselves what type of material is to be included in different units, who is worthy of being lecturer or tutor in each unit and how that unit is to be assessed.9

The quotes above attest to the easy conflation of tertiary education as both a private and public good in the Handbooks. Education was viewed both as a commodity to be shaped by the demands of students in order to improve their individual educational experience, and as a primary vehicle for producing an informed, civically competent (and subversive) citizenry. An emphasis on the latter readily informed the consistent demands made in the publication for course content that would encourage critical thinking, for lecturers who would facilitate this kind of education, and for assessment procedures that would encourage the development of, and test for competence in the exercise of a student’s critical faculties. 

The problem attested to by publication of the Handbooks was that this kind of commitment was lacking at the University, while the consistently abrasive tone of the editorials and unit write-ups was justified by the perception of academic reluctance to respond to these challenges. This perception of reluctance shaped the confrontational ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ tone of the Handbooks and governed the approach to reform contained within them. This approach focused on raising student awareness of educational issues in order to promote student demands for educational reform on a number of fronts. Below I focus on two of the most prominent issues raised, those of perceived deficiencies in lecturing quality, and perceived deficiencies with assessment and assessment methodology.

Lectures and Lecturers

The existing lecture system is a failure – that is if communication between students and lecturer, self-expression or even basic efficiency in transmitting information are held to be desirable ends in the educational process.10

The present lecture system is outmoded, inefficient and an affront to all involved.11

Introductory material, penned either by editors or anonymous contributors, was used to introduce issues of concern and raise student awareness of them in the various issues of the Handbook. These introductory critiques were then used as the referent for subsequent discussions on teaching: Department by Department and Unit by Unit. Particular antipathy was held toward the lecture system and it was one dimension of the university learning experience that attracted repeated criticism for its failure to contribute to the educational aim of producing critical thinkers. It was this transition, from general criticism in the editorial pages to lecturer- and course-specific criticism in the Handbook proper, that made the Handbooks such a controversial contribution to debates over teaching and learning. So controversial in fact, that legal action in libel was pursued in one instance, with threats of similar action occurring in at least one other (see fig 1 attached).12 

With the link made between general and specific criticism, the Handbooks were not only attempting to make teaching practices more visible, but, through the process of publicly identifying problem units and lauding praise on good ones, they were used in the attempt to both directly influence and indirectly govern those practices. Direct influence was encouraged through participation in staff/student committees where it was hoped students could influence ‘the type of material to be included in different units.’13  Indirect influence was arguably attempted through the praising or castigation of particular units (and their lecturers by implication). When published, this information could be used by students in the selection or avoidance of certain units, and taken up by lecturers as either an endorsement of their teaching practices or an injunction to reflect more seriously on them. Consider the following example.

The 1976 edition of the Handbooks provides an introductory piece on what constituted a good lecture and a good lecturing style – well organized, pitched at an appropriate level, conducive to good note-taking, enhanced by audio/visual aids, clear explication of the relationship between course objectives and the content of the lecture, content theoretically or methodologically grounded etc.  –  touching on a host of themes now enshrined in university guidelines and professional development programs.14 This introductory piece was coupled with a host of stinging unit critiques on lecturing quality. English 110 was one such unit on the receiving end. Students were told that if they wished to major in English it would be advisable to enroll in two first year units. English 100 was compulsory, leaving a choice between English 110 and English 120. Based on survey feedback from the previous year, potential students were told nothing of the lecturing quality in 120, while lectures in 110 had been described variously as ‘dogmatic,’ ‘disjointed,’ and ‘useless.’15  While these descriptions lack the pedagogical basis of the editorial critiques of lecturing, the absence of such negativity in 120 could clearly have operated to influence students in their unit selection. Whether or not this actually happened is another story.

When the same unit was critiqued in the 1977 edition of the Handbook, an altogether different picture was presented: 

There were two main areas of complaint in 1976 and the staff have already made moves to improve these in 1977.

The two main lecturers, Professor Jones and Dr. Hill were highly praised by all students and their lectures described as well prepared, easy to follow, interesting and well presented.16

The differences in the feedback received and the write-up from the previous year are profound. The extent to which changes were implemented as a consequence of the critique of the previous year is, of course, impossible to tell, but the first quote attests to some relationship between student complaints and course changes. In any event, this paper is not primarily concerned with establishing causation; rather, it emphasises the proactive nature of student engagement with educational issues.

This pro-activity presents as the crucial difference between the Handbooks and the current assemblage of policies, guidelines and programs implemented by the University. Using their own resources – administrative, financial and intellectual – and through the development of their own survey mechanism, those at the Handbook provided students with a pedagogical basis for assessing lectures and lecturers and a kind of checklist to determine whether or not good lectures were what they were receiving in their courses. Publishing that feedback enabled students of the following year to make use of lecturer critiques to shape their choice of units. 
Institutional concerns with lecture quality are obviously designed with the same objectives in mind – ensuring a high quality learning environment for students – and involve consideration of the same sorts of questions in seeking to promote this environment: how to convey to staff what a good lecture is, how to make lecturing quality visible and how to make it governable? The techniques by which this is done though, are of course entirely different from those pursued in the Handbooks. What follows is only a brief sketch of some of these techniques, not a detailed account of them. However, it should suffice to hint at the comprehensiveness of the mechanisms in place that make teaching quality both visible and governable.

Consider a newly appointed academic. Pursuant to their letters of offer of appointment, new academic staff are expected to complete the Foundations of Teaching and Learning program.17  The course encourages academics to develop a philosophy of teaching and learning, provides instruction on effective lecturing practices and strategies and provides the pedagogical tools necessary for auto-critique of teaching practices. Evaluation of these practices also includes feedback from students through now ubiquitous survey instruments like SPOT (Student Perceptions of Teaching) and SURF (Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback).18  Further visibility of these practices is provided through the requirement that academics maintain a Teaching and Learning Portfolio incorporating the following: evidence of excellence in teaching and learning; evidence of leadership in teaching and learning; and evidence of commitment to high quality education. A degree of governance is achieved by subjecting this document to scrutiny in annual Professional Development Reviews and for all applications for promotion and tenure.19 

As mentioned previously, this type of institutional focus on the pedagogy of teaching and learning, and the development of an administrative apparatus dedicated to educating and monitoring the role of the academic-as-teacher makes the existence of a publication like the Alternative Arts Handbook less critical in many ways. The incorporation of student feedback as but one part of this institutional supervisory and educative mechanism presents as an instructive one, removing total reliance on student feedback as an indicator of teaching performance, feedback which, as constantly voiced in the Handbooks, was often not forthcoming or so devoid of intelligent critique as to make it worthless. Nevertheless important differences result when there is a focal shift from students making students aware of educational issues, to an institutional emphasis on making academics aware of, and accountable for quality teaching practices. A brief comparison between the different uses made of the Handbook survey mechanism and SURF should prove instructive.

As described on the University’s website, SURF is ‘a survey instrument’ that provides feedback on the educational experience of students in order to ‘promote systemic responsiveness to this feedback.’20  The survey is restricted to six questions and these address the clarity of unit expectations and assessment requirements; the correlation between assessment tasks and unit objectives; the quality of unit materials and unit organisation; and whether, overall, ‘the unit was a good educational experience.’21  These questions canvass feedback on exactly the same issues as the Handbook survey, although the collection of feedback and access to the results of the survey present as considerably different.

Whereas the Handbooks requested written responses to issues of quality in teaching, SURF forms request numerical designations of quality for each of the six questions; and while the results of the Handbook survey were collated and summarized into unit reviews published in a public forum to be made use of by students in selecting units, SURF results for individual units are communicated only to unit coordinators and the relevant Head of School.22  Students provide the feedback in both instances, and in both instances staff had/have the opportunity to reflect on, and possibly reform their teaching practices; but only through one mechanism was this feedback made public, a kind of exposé to enable guidance to students in unit selection, and only through one was academic reflection on teaching practice pursued through a process of public shaming.

Assessment

Opposition to grading represents – in an admittedly small-scale way – opposition to the present structure of capitalist society.23

‘Validity’ is simply whether or not the exam measures what it claims to…Not surprisingly that claim can be regarded, in unscientific terms, as bullshit.24

The role of assessments and the rationale supporting them, or lack thereof, were also consistent targets in the editorials of the Alternative Arts Handbooks. Criticisms generally focused on the lack of validity and reliability of the examination system as a measure of knowledge; the lack of alignment between learning objectives and the mode of assessment; and the need for greater emphasis to be placed on evaluation as opposed to the affixation of a ‘mere grade’ to completed assessments. In considering these criticisms, this paper again seeks to recuperate the role of the student voice in the emergence of these debates; in registering a certain debt owed by students then and now to that activism; and in illuminating the way the Handbooks were used to make these issues visible.

In consistently being used to highlight problems in these areas, the Handbooks were a key vehicle for focusing attention on the role of the academic-as-teacher. In fact, no other role was considered. The issue here was that while those at the helm of the Handbooks may have grudgingly accepted the expertise of academic staff in their fields of interest, they were in no way convinced that this expertise translated to a sufficient grounding in pedagogical best practices in the use of assessment as part of an effective teaching and learning strategy. Again, the first step was to convince students of this lack of expertise through editorial awareness-raising of what constituted ‘good’ assessment practice; the second was to encourage direct student engagement with lecturers and tutors in the interests of making changes to assessment procedures on a unit by unit basis.

The first point to pursue here was the distinction made in the Handbooks between the provision of qualitative feedback on an assessment and the conferral of a grade on a student through their work – HD, A, 1 – symbols purporting to codify competencies and designate a level of achievement; symbols that we have all fretted over at some time. Cumulatively, they map a student’s individual progress over time and provide the means by which they can be classified or ranked in relation to others; they remain as unalterable symbols of proficiency on academic transcripts, fated in many instances to influence one’s prospects in the competition for scholarships, job interviews and employment; future income, lifestyle, happiness; the fate of one’s place in the world and so on. The criticism leveled through the Handbooks was that despite the importance attached to these symbols, in practice they were actually lacking in any meaning, or at the very least, lacked sufficient meaning to be of any value in the learning process.25  The problem described by various Handbook contributors was that the grade-as-symbol was rendered meaningless when divorced from evaluation and alignment with course objectives. The following example was given as a justification for this criticism in an editorial entitled ‘The futility of grading.’ The author describes an essay received back from a professor:

[W]ith a B+ inscribed on it, and nothing else; not a single comment, not even a meaningless tick! The marker took issue with none of the points I raised, laid bare none of the assumptions that lay beneath my assertions, questioned none of my judgments. For all I know, he need not have read the work. The grade standing so starkly on its own meant absolutely nothing to me.26 

This criticism was used to do work on two fronts, one polemical and ‘revolutionary,’ the other, more reformist and concerned with promoting awareness of extant problems with assessment practices in the Arts. I consider the latter in greater detail, but it is worth briefly alluding to the former, as it helps to contextualize the severity of the tone evidenced in the Handbooks on this issue. In short, examples of the type quoted above were mobilized as a means of attacking the university as a bourgeois institution. The link here between the bourgeois and the B+ is admittedly difficult to make out. Nevertheless, this example was used to indict academics as collaborators in the perpetuation of class division and the economic conditions of society, and grading practices were identified as part of the toolkit used by academics in support of this conspiracy of Capital.27  Under this interpretation – often present but always awkwardly deployed, articulated and justified – grading itself was perceived as hostile to the interests of the working class. By opposing the whole concept of grading, students could, ‘in an admittedly small scale way,’ signal their ‘opposition to the present structure of capitalist society.’28 

More productive criticisms focused on the purported severance between grading and evaluation; between symbol and meaning. This criticism was based on a number of assumptions or expectations about higher education. Firstly, that a university education should develop in individuals a set of competencies; secondly, that those competencies should be clearly articulated; thirdly, that assessment of students should function as an effective means of measuring the extent to which those competencies were being demonstrated; fourthly, that assessment feedback should identify to what extent those competencies had been demonstrated so that students could take responsibility for self-improvement – assumptions/expectations that are now codified in the institutional assemblage of policies, programs and guidelines governing assessment practices.29  The final assumption was that a significant number of academics were not, for the most part, living up to these expectations or even cognizant of them.30  The proof of this was in the continued commitment to the examination system.31

During the mid- to late seventies the use of examinations in the humanities and social sciences was far more prolific than today, often operating as the sole grading device for many units. A number of problems were raised here that related to the effectiveness of the exam as a learning device. Firstly, and most straightforwardly, an unreturned exam offered a student no feedback. A poor or an average grade might lead to a decision to work harder, but work harder on what? In the absence of feedback, exams were seen as contributing little to the learning experience of students.

The second line of critique also castigated the utility of exams as a method of assessment, making reference to research on the validity and reliability of the exam as a tool in measuring student competencies. This critique was initially put forward by Handbook contributors from the Psychology department and was consistently cut/copy/pasted into subsequent editions of the publication. An exam’s ‘validity’ could be determined with reference to the ‘match between what is intended to be measured [as per the course objectives] and what is measured,’ while ‘reliability’ was expressed as the likelihood that, ‘if we all did the test again tomorrow, would we get the same marks or at least all finish in the same order…would different markers put candidates in the same order?’32  Citing a number of texts, it was suggested that any claim that this would occur was, ‘in unscientific terms, bullshit.’33  For a one off determinant of aptitude, too many performance variables unrelated to mastery of course objectives came into play at the student end for the exam to be ‘valid,’ while it was held, paraphrasing Pieron, that ‘reliability’ in the determination of examination marks was about ‘as likely as the Second Coming;’ the vagaries of marking differentials too imprecise for reliability to attach to them.34

In coupling concerns over the effectiveness of the examination system – reliability and validity – with concerns over the lack of evaluative feedback on exams and other assessments, compilers of the Handbook were attempting to raise student awareness of problems with assessment and hoping to enlist their support in advocacy for change. It was primarily hoped this would be achieved through the formation or resuscitation of staff/student committees where issues related to assessment could be addressed, although editorial optimism that such engagement would occur was never particularly high.35  Nevertheless, when these introductory remarks on assessment were combined with value laden descriptions of the assessment requirements for each Arts unit – archaic, progressive etc. – students were provided with information and a pedagogical basis for voting with their feet. What effect this information had on students is of course impossible to tell, yet there can be no mistaking the aspiration to empower students in their course selections with regard to assessment and to put academics on notice in a very public forum that their assessment practices were being scrutinised.

Conclusion: redundant and helpful

The Handbooks were used to demand greater accountability in tertiary teaching practices and operated as a public forum in which perceived deficiencies in these teaching practices could be disseminated. While the attempt has not been made here to trace the actual effects of the Handbooks – to measure the extent to which they progressed debates over teaching and learning at the University – it should at least be clear that the publications played a prominent role in the emergence of these debates and were an important vehicle for raising student awareness of various issues in education. The softening of the tone of these publications during the eighties and the eventual demise of the Handbooks in the nineties correlates with a growing systemic interest in promoting academic awareness of, and commitment to, pedagogically grounded best practices in teaching at the University and at tertiary institutions nationwide.

The demise of the publications, as previously stated, should come as no surprise in an environment where a comprehensive assemblage of institutional guidelines, policies and programs were directed at the same goal: promoting quality teaching practices. In pursuance of that same goal though, it has been useful to consider the very different approaches that were adopted. The Handbooks aimed to raise student awareness of various educational issues and encouraged engagement with them; pressure was applied from the outside-in. On the other hand, the current assemblage of policies and programs that make teaching quality visible and governable are implemented from the inside-out. In this situation, students obviously benefit from increased academic awareness of, for example, the pedagogical basis of good lecturing when that theory is turned into practice, but are they as well equipped to discern qualities or deficiencies in lecturing practices? Student feedback for the Handbooks was published to assist students in selecting/avoiding units and to provide academics with student reactions to their teaching, while student feedback today is aimed primarily at academic auto-critique. Is this preferable?  By highlighting the role of the Handbooks, the aim has been to provide context for these current practices so that questions like those raised above can be asked. Without such context, current practices become a kind of taken-for-granted reference point and the role of students and academics within these processes generate their own inertia of normalcy.

 

Phil Keirle is a postgraduate candidate in the School of Humanities at The University of Western Australia.

References

 

  1. ‘Myths’, P. McNab & J. McIntyre (eds.), Alternative Arts Handbook, Perth, Dick McPilpel & Son, 1977, p. 13.
  2. McNab, P. & McIntyre,J.  ‘Editorial’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 3.
  3. Barcan, A. 2002, Radical students: the old left at Sydney University, Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne University Press. While Barcan is particularly concerned with radical student politics at Sydney University, his work touches on student politics in the Australian context generally.
  4. The Alternative Arts Handbooks shared the same financial benefactor as the original version of The New Critic (The Critic). Details of the Arts Union funding of the Handbooks can be found in, C. Sebestyen, ‘Arts Union’, J. Calleja & K. Mossenson (eds.), Alternative Arts Handbook, no publication details, 1976, p. 6; and B. Scott, ‘Arts Union’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 6.
  5. ‘Introduction’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1978, p. 1.
  6. Professor Alan Robson, Vice Chancellor, The University of Western Australia, interviewed by Assoc. Professor Jane Long & Brooke Lamperd, Oct. 2007.
  7. ibid.
  8. McNab & McIntyre, ‘Editorial: Subversives’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 3.
  9. ibid.
  10. J. Calleja & K. Mossenson, ‘Editorial: Lectures’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1976, p. 4.
  11. McNab & McIntyre, 'Editorial: Lectures’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 10.
  12. T.H. Gibbons & R.D. Jordan, ‘Letter to Messrs. James McIntyre & Peter McNab’, published in Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 26.
  13. ‘Staff/Student Committees’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1976, p. 3; ‘Staff Student Committees’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 8.
  14. ‘Lectures’, Alternative Arts Handbook, J. Calleja & K. Mossenson (eds.), 1976, p. 4. From an institutional perspective, awareness- raising of the pedagogy grounding good lecturing practice can be found in publications like Issues of Teaching and Learning: see for example, ‘Learning through Lectures’, Vol. 8, No. 6, 2002; ‘Active Learning in Lectures’, Vol. 8, No. 6, 2002; ‘Lecturing and Loving it?’, Vol. 7, No. 8, 2001; ‘Active Learning Strategies’, Vol. 7, No. 8, 2001.
  15. ‘English 110’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1976, p. 18.
  16. ‘English 110’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 28.
  17. Foundations of Teaching and Learning, Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL), University of Western Australia, Feb. 18, 2009.
    <https://www.catl.uwa.edu.au/programmes/teaching_and_learning/foundations_of_teaching_and_learning> 2009 (accessed 7 May, 2009).
  18. The use of SPOT surveys by academic staff is ‘strongly endorsed’ by the University without being a mandatory requirement: ‘Evaluation of Teaching: SPOT Policy’, CATL, University of Western Australia, Jan. 8, 2007 < https://www.catl.uwa.edu.au/evaluation_of_teaching_unit/spot/policy > (accessed May 7, 2009). The SURF survey instrument is ‘used to evaluate all units in the University, except those with special circumstances...which the Head of School feels are more appropriately evaluated by other means’: ‘Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback: About the SURF survey’, CATL, University of Western Australia, no date provided <https://www.surf.uwa.edu.au/admin/help/About.aspx> (accessed May 7, 2009).
  19. ‘Guide for the use of an Academic Portfolio’, HR Policies and Procedures, TheUniversity of Western Australia, May 26, 2008 <https://www.hr.uwa.edu.au/policy/toc/academic_portfolio_guide> (accessed May 7, 2009).
  20. ‘Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback: About the SURF survey’, CATL, The University of Western Australia <https://www.surf.uwa.edu.au/admin/help/About.aspx > (accessed May 7, 2009).
  21. ibid.
  22. ibid.
  23. ‘The Futility of Grading’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1978, p. 7.
  24. ‘Assessment’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 8.
  25. ‘Assessment’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, pp. 7-8.
  26. ‘The Futility of Grading’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1978, p. 7.
  27. ibid.
  28. ibid.
  29. The principal instrument operable here is the University’s ‘Guidelines on Assessment,’ which outlines the Purposes of Assessment (section 6.0) and Responsibilities (7.0) for ensuring that best practices in formal assessment are implemented. https://www.secretariat.uwa.edu.au/home/policies/assessment?f=90692> (accessed May 7, 2009). In turn, this document guides the content and focus of professional development programs like Foundations in Teaching and Learning, and structures the type of feedback sought in student survey mechanisms like SPOT and SURF.
  30. See for example, R. Jones, ‘Exams and Assessment’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1976, p. 2.
  31. ‘The Futility of Grading’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1978, p. 7.
  32. ‘Assessment’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, pp. 7-8.
  33. ‘Assessment’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 8.
  34. Pieron, H. 1963, ‘Examens et docimologie: Paris’, cited in R.J. Cox, ‘Examinations and Higher Education’, University Quarterly, Jun. 1967, p. 234.
  35. ‘Staff/Student Committees’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1976, p. 3; ‘Staff Student Committees’, Alternative Arts Handbook, 1977, p. 8.