{"id":397,"date":"2019-07-05T10:23:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T10:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/?p=397"},"modified":"2019-10-04T10:26:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T10:26:59","slug":"communicating-ancient-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/2019\/07\/05\/communicating-ancient-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Communicating Ancient Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barbara Goff<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0School of Humanities\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0b.e.goff@reading.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

Overview<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In my Part 2 module \u2018Ancient Sport\u2019 I offer students a choice between a traditional essay and an \u2018outreach project\u2019, which requires them to communicate an aspect of ancient sport to a non-academic audience, perhaps for schools or for the general public.<\/p>\n

Objectives<\/strong><\/h3>\n
    \n
  • To develop students\u2019 communication skills in an attractive way<\/li>\n
  • To diversify assessment in a relevant way (I first taught the module in an Olympics year)<\/li>\n
  • To foster students\u2019 sense of their own employability by developing a range of skills.<\/li>\n
  • To engage students more fully in an assessment that draws on creativity and imagination.<\/li>\n
  • I also hoped that students would have fun with the assessment, which they definitely have done.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Context<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    The module \u2018Ancient Sport\u2019 investigates Ancient Greek and Roman sporting activities with a focus on relating these to concepts of gender, desire, citizen identity, political power, and empire.\u00a0 The histories of art, architecture and engineering are also important.\u00a0 Amy Smith, the Curator of the Ure Museum, suggested the outreach project when I started planning the new module.\u00a0 I consulted with other colleagues in Study Advice, and the then Teaching and Learning Dean, in order to design the assessment effectively.\u00a0 \u00a0I monitored the success of the outreach project via evaluations and discussion with students as well as via assessing the work itself, and recursively amended rubric and feedback sheet in order to communicate what students needed to do, and to guide their practice by clarifying criteria.<\/p>\n

    Implementation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    Each outreach project has to be accompanied by a commentary on a relevant ancient text, a bibliography of secondary literature, and a reflective essay.\u00a0\u00a0 I start talking to the students about the assessment choices at the beginning of term.\u00a0 Towards the end of term, students discuss their chosen project with me and get some feedback on how it is developing.\u00a0\u00a0 The module includes a workshop on outreach communications, run by Kim Shahabudin, a colleague from Study Advice, and we share with the students the specific rubric and feedback form which I have developed to address the various elements of the assessment.\u00a0 We also situate the assessment in the context of employability, pointing towards the importance of being able to reflect on one\u2019s own work, as well as stressing research and communication skills.<\/p>\n

    Impact<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    The outreach project assessment has been very successful, with many evaluations picking it out as a strength of the module.\u00a0 In informal conversations, it has become clear that students understand the link with employability, e.g. with their ambitions towards teaching, journalism or museum work. Over the years students have produced work such as videos both educational and entertaining, board games, museum trails, short stories, comics and magazines.\u00a0 I have been impressed by the effort, imagination, humour and creativity that students have put into their work, and also by their ability to reflect on their achievements, any limitations of their projects, and the decisions that they had to make along the way.\u00a0 I have been particularly gratified when students who have struggled with the traditional essay, for a variety of reasons, have found an assessment activity in which they can really shine.\u00a0 We have used several projects on Open Days and in workshops for local schools.<\/p>\n

    Reflections<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    What has mainly contributed to the success of this activity is simply the effort and commitment of the students, and I am very glad to have elicited such good work.\u00a0 This activity has also been very well supported by colleagues in Study Advice and in the Ure Museum, for which I am grateful.\u00a0 The activity has required me to rethink things like assessment criteria and rubrics, which I have found useful overall in my teaching.<\/p>\n

    Follow up<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    I find it very productive to approach assessment as a way of fostering employability and a variety of skills.\u00a0 As Departmental Director of Teaching and Learning I am keen for the Department to continue to extend such opportunities for students to engage with a variety of assessment.\u00a0 I have given extra publicity to our Independent Project module, which offers an alternative to the dissertation.\u00a0 Although I shall rest \u2018Ancient Sport\u2019 for a while, I shall develop a creative writing assessment in a Part 3 module.\u00a0 We are going to investigate the transformations of the figure of Helen of Troy, across different literary genres and periods, and students will have the opportunity to produce their own version of Helen, in poetry, short story, script, or other text.\u00a0 Reflection as well as research will be a significant part of this assessment.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Barbara Goff\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0School of Humanities\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0b.e.goff@reading.ac.uk Overview In my Part 2 module \u2018Ancient Sport\u2019 I offer students a choice between a traditional essay and an \u2018outreach project\u2019, which requires them to communicate an aspect of ancient sport to a non-academic audience, perhaps for schools or for the general public. Objectives To develop students\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[10,12,24],"tags":[191],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}