COVID-19

Games and unessays for authentic assessment and learning

Crawford School of Public Policy | Resources, Environment and Development Group

Event details

RE&D Research Seminar

Date & time

Thursday 11 May 2023
12.00pm–1.00pm

Venue

Lennox room and Online via Zoom

Speaker

Siobhan McDonnell, Caroline E. Schuster and Alison Cumming-Thom

Contacts

Kat Taylor

Is it time to say ‘goodbye’ to essays and lectures? Join us for a panel discussion on creative and authentic approaches to assessment and learning. The need for authentic assessment has come to the fore recently, in the wake of new AI tools for writing, such as Chat GPT. We will hear from Alison Cumming Thom on the principles of authentic assessment (which uses skills, knowledge and capacities in ‘real-world’ settings) and how it can be used to create space for engaged learning.

Dr Siobhan McDonnell will talk to us about the virtual online disaster game that she built that plays out a cyclone in real time, with students placed in Pacific Villages and fictional NGOs grappling with the politics of disaster management, inclusiveness and the impacts of climate change. Associate Professor Caroline Schuster will discuss scaffolding independent student research through unessays.

Biographies

Siobhan McDonnell is a lawyer and anthropologist with over 25 years of experience working with Indigenous people in Australia and Oceania on land rights, gender, and climate change issues. Since 2019 she has been a negotiator on climate change for various Pacific governments, and has previously written constitutional and major land reforms to deliver better customary land rights for the Vanuatu government.

Caroline E. Schuster is an economic anthropologist in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (CASS). Her research on climate finance in Latin America includes a forthcoming graphic ethnography (i.e. comic), Forecasts: a story of weather and finance at the edge of disaster, out in June with University of Toronto Press.

Alison Cumming-Thom is the Manager, Teaching and Learning for the Crawford School and lucky enough to have worked with wonderful teachers at the Crawford School, ANZSOG, and a range of international Crawford partners. Prior to coming to the National Centre of Development Studies, she was the Convenor of the Columbia University Teachers College Masters in Teaching in Tokyo.

Host: Simon West

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