MA Week 6 - Presenting Work for Assessment

Reflection on taught session, Friday 6th November 2015

Presenting Work for Assessment

Some really useful stuff in this session from Annabeth.

Signpost your work

You need to signpost your work so that both internal and external examiners can find their way through it. If you think something belongs in both the Research Methods and Professional Context module, you will have to write it up in two different ways as a piece of work can only be marked once. It’s a good idea to summarise and label your work so that it’s very clear to the examiners.

This threw me a bit. I’m fine with signposting my work, or presenting it any way that’s needed, but I’d understood from previous talks that the work we’re doing this term would be viewed holistically and that it was OK if the two modules mingled together. After all, it’s the  one person, me in this case, doing both and having one set of thought processes. My classmates pointed out that I should be able to easily split my blog posts between the two modules, but I think it will mean some rework, which means using time, which is in short supply at the moment. Ho hum. I also need to go back and tag my blog posts with the relevant module name, which I hadn’t thought of doing, but that shouldn’t take too long.

All that said, the point was then made that you do need to be able to “synthesise” the modules, i.e. cross-reference them as you move on. I need to bear this in mind in future but I don’t see it as an issue. In fact I think it is a positive thing as it acknowledges that you are trying to form a holistic view of your practice.

Think about how you present your work for assessment:

·         If you’re a sculptor or VJ, film your work, your process, your studio. Get a YouTube channel and put bite-size videos up, then signpost the examiner to key clips of them.

·         Use audio clips of you articulating your thoughts, if you wish, but don’t expect the examiner to listen to the whole lot – again, signpost the main clips.

·         Get good photos of your work.

·         Document critical moments.

·         Don’t forget to document the learning outcomes as well as your artistic outcomes.

·         Reflect! Reflect!

I feel comfortable with this. During the Access course I documented and reflected on everything. The points I do need to think about are the quality of my photos, so I need to chat to my tutor about this. What is acceptable for journals? And is my reflection at the correct level for Masters? I’m also making frequent reference to learning outcomes, checking my work and progress against them, so again I’m comfortable with that. I just need to keep it up!

Investigate recent advances in your own field

For example, the latest thinking on feminism. Doing this had been mentioned before. I’ve been trying to check publication dates on books to see how recent they are, particularly if an issue is very current (the state of the creative industries is a recent example I’ve been researching). So I’ve started to become aware of this. Another to keep in mind.

Annabeth also suggested TED talks and the identification of conferences you’d like to attend. This was useful as I hadn’t really thought in this way. Something to take on board.

Think professionally

Start thinking about your community of practice, and get on with identifying organisations you can partner with and who can fund you. How can you partner with these? How are you going to pitch to these? Do you need to think about quantitative methods, e.g. getting some facts and figures?

I’ve started thinking about networking as a way into this. I need to also start building a body of work to use with organisations. There is much more thinking I need to do about this; I need to develop that thinking as I move through the course, particularly as my attention turns back to the more creative angle. I hope this will occur as a natural development.

Conclusion

I’m comfortable that I’m already covering at least some of the points raised. I think this is a blog post that I need to keep referring back to as I progress through the course, as a kind of checklist, until all the practices become second nature.