Dear colleagues and friends,
We are opening up new opportunities for the wider community to share examples of creative practice. This academic year, our main focus will be on creative assessment ideas/practices and contributions will be shared here on the #creativeHE website. The idea comes directly from members of the creativeHE community in association with the UK Media-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG) and the Journal Open Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (oSoTL).
You may be an academic, academic developer, learning designer, learning developer or any other professional supporting learning in higher education. We also welcome contributions from students in higher education. Whatever your role, your ideas, stories and practices will reflect your thinking about or experience of engaging with creative assessment(s). All voices and contributions are warmly welcome.
We are looking for short articles between 500 to 800 words. These can be single or multi-authored contributions.
We welcome articles or posts on creative ways to assess learning. By assessment, we mean both formative and summative assessment, anything in between, and how the task is integrated into the learning experience. Articles could be about non-standard forms of assessment beyond traditional exams, essays, and coursework including, for example, elements of creative inquiry that provide space for diverse forms of student engagement and expression, and that evidence learning and development.
Contributions could be about a specific discipline or professional area where the approach has changed understandings about the role of assessment. Or it could be an adaptation of a method familiar to your discipline that you believe could be used more widely. If you are an educator, you may have recently changed a particular assessment or have an idea for a change and putting this into a few words is part of your own reflective process. Your method may be inspired by the ways people live and work beyond the academic world. Ideas can come from anywhere.
You may have tried a new assessment for the first time with your students or as a learner feel excited about how a creative assessment went. You may be looking for advice or even collaborators on a creative assessment project or may be looking to develop your capacity as a creative scholar and connect with others who are also interested in creative assessment.
Access to producing digital media is ubiquitous, for teachers and students. You may have examples of creative assessments in which video, graphics or audio are used. If so, how did your use of media extend your options? What are the opportunities and challenges of using a wider range of media in your assessment?
We invite you to share your thinking and practice with the wider community by submitting a short article. We want your contribution to be part of a conversation about creative assessment because if we demonstrate the value of creativity in this area, we signal the value of creativity in any academic practice.
Why contribute
We welcome both experienced and new authors.
- Disseminating some of your experimentations around creative assessment in this supportive community may be a first step in writing about your experience in higher education.
- Writing can help you to reflect on and develop your creative identity.
- Writing in a community will open connections to other inspiring people who may go on to be great future collaborators!
Submissions will be reviewed and you will be supported until your article is published.
If you are interested in joining an online writing group, in collaboration with oSoTL editors, please let us know. The working-out-loud (WoL) outputs could take shape as blog posts on #creativeHE blog or developed into full papers for a special edition in the open access (no hidden costs) and open peer reviewed journal.
Please note, all articles are made available under an open licence, will be shared on the #creativeHE website. Some may be curated for an openly licensed collection at a later stage. Yours could be one of them. You also have the opportunity to publish your article in the oSoTL journal.
Details of what you should include in your submission are outlined below.
Submit your contribution via this simple form by 30th January 2024. This is the first rolling deadline. Additional opportunities will be communicated up to May 2024.
We can’t wait to receive your submissions.
We aim to review articles as they are coming in and publish them after an open peer review process throughout 2024.
Details of what to include
Article title: descriptive, engaging and <12 words
Author(s): indicate which of you is the lead author
Lead author email: primary method of communication
Social media handles: optional
Affiliation: your university or college or other educational context
Author biographies: <50 words providing your professional context for this article
Your article: between 500 and 800 words including references. Please use accessible and conversational language to engage a diverse readership. Acknowledge sources, including the origin of any visuals, and remember to add all references used too using APA style.
Article abstract: a succinct description to help us promote your contribution (<50 words)
Supplementary media submissions: We also welcome supplementary contributions that use video, audio or graphical media. Written and rich media should not be dependent on each other to make sense but may demonstrate how their particular affordances present your ideas and experiences in different ways. Note: media submissions will typically be in the form of a link to a publically accessible video, audio, or graphic.
We are very much looking forward to your submissions.
Chrissi, Anna, Nathalie, Andrew and Alex
The project team #creativeHE, MELSIG and oSoTL
About this project elsewhere on the web
Acevedo, B. and Middleton, A. (2023) Creative assessment, Exquisite Education Podcast, 15 Dec 2023, https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/exquisite-education/episodes/Creative-Assessment-e2d9fjp/a-aao9u5u
Middleton, A. (2023) Creative assessment – what is it. Tactile. 15 December 2023. https://tactilelearning.wordpress.com/2023/12/15/creative-assessment-what-is-it/
#creativeHE 