S1: E4: Thinking Outside the Box to Assess Language Knowledge

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

If you have a connection to languages, this is the podcast for you. Whether you're a language learner, a language teacher, a language researcher, or anyone who's interested in languages. I'm Dr. Marie-Josee Bisson, and with my colleague, Dr. Kaitlyn Zavaleta. We are the language scientists, and this is our podcast. We are senior lecturers in psychology at the De Montfort University, and we conduct research into the area of language learning. Throughout this series, we hope to translate the science behind language learning into informative and useful practical advice. So sit back and enjoy. Today we are joined by Dr. Alex Mangold from Aberystwyth University, who will talk to us about creative assessment. Welcome, Alex.

Dr Alex Mangold

Hi there.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

So Alex did his undergraduate degree in literature and linguistics at Augsburg University. He then did a PhD in theatre studies at Aberystwyth University and also a master's degree in psychology. He is now a lecturer in modern languages. So Alex, before we talk about your creative assessment project, I always ask our interviewees if they can tell us a little bit about their language background.

Dr Alex Mangold

Yeah, I've got a quite a varied language background thanks to the question, because I went to school in Germany, so grew up there, then studied English and French at university. Then moved back to the UK, did a Ph.D, obviously in English obviously, and then sort of learned some Welsh. So there are several languages going on. I also have two kids and we're kind of a bilingual household with a bit of Welsh mixed in. So you can imagine it's it's it's interesting sometimes with with, you know, all three languages coming up in one sentence, you know, because if you talk about things and you know, if something happened in English, for example, you would automatically switch. And, you know, the kids will tell you something that happened at school and they will use Welsh words in English sentences. And, you know, one of them is two years old. And you get funny bits sometimes where you just have to take a moment and think about, okay, this is this is Welsh and I never know what to say. So sometimes it actually takes a little, yeah, that the background.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

Yeah. So that sounds really interesting, in fact. And it's great to hear about all your your different languages. The reason I invited Alex on the podcast is that I met him recently because Alex also has a British Academy Talent Development Award, just like Kaitlin and I received for our podcast project. But your topic addresses the problem of the kind of the decline in uptake of languages in higher education a different way. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Dr Alex Mangold

Yes, absolutely. It's an interesting project because it doesn't just I mean, as you said, look at the sustainability of foreign languages in the higher education context. But what we're looking at is we're looking broadly speaking and doing things differently when it comes to assessment, when it comes to artistic research in modern languages. And a lot of this goes back to a conference that a colleague of mine, Sara Fukuda, from from Bangor University and I, we organised a conference on artistic research a couple of years ago. And what we found was that despite the fact that we had set it up as artistic research, primarily the most interesting bits were the types of assessment and creative work that people presented that they they had brought to the conference that were students work. And what we found then was,you know, this is really interesting. A lot of people out there are doing quite interesting things when it comes to assessment. So it's not just the artistic research that underpins their own research, say looking into performances, podcasts, films, etc themselves. But what we found really interesting was that a lot of students are doing really creative work in response to the content that they present at university. So we thought, okay, let's come up with a project that would maybe look into this. And then we came out with the current project, the Creative Modern Languages Project, where we look at artistic research but primarily at creative assessment. And we're looking into examples that we collect all across the UK and beyond and will then hopefully turn all of these examples into a very interesting, inspirational hub online where people can go and see what's on offer or what people do at different institutions, and A how this might then inspire other students to a pick up a foreign language and B maybe study it to a degree level, because this will be the kinds of assessment that they might be doing.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

That's fantastic. I mean, what's it like to do a degree in modern foreign languages these days, anyway? Like what what kind of vibe do you get from the students? Do you get a vibe that something needs to change or?

Dr Alex Mangold

It's interesting. You get a lot of students who either have a background in modern languages or a particular interest culturally, and that's usually the main motivators for students to actually pick up a language and and study it at degree level. But you get a lot of students who are not really that much interested in just learning the language or just looking at the culture. But sort of nowadays they also realise that there's an employability aspect that comes from speaking a foreign language, and so they're looking at a certain career, for example. Now, interestingly enough, you will notice that the past couple of years, you know, there's been a steady decline in secondary school education when it comes to modern foreign languages. And you've got fewer and fewer departments in the UK actually offering modern languages as part of a degree. So I think at the moment we stand at 39 departments and a couple of years back it was 56 or something. So we've lost quite a few departments. And one of the reasons I think is or we think and this is also part of the reason for this project, one of the reasons is that it's maybe not presented as something that students, especially at secondary level, would find interesting. Maybe it's just not something that they've ever thought about ooo I could study a language because, you know, I might be doing interesting things later. I mean, it doesn't mean that they have to go abroad or work in Germany or France or Southern America. But it could be something that interests them from a you know, maybe from a from a humanities point of view or from a from a personal point of view. Maybe they want to learn something about code switching or they want to learn something about translation in a particular area, or they're interested in children's literature. And so if we could bring these things together and then create a hub where people could go and say, Oh, this is really, really good stuff. This is something I never thought about when I thought of German or speaking French. Ideally, then people will say, okay, this is interesting. But going back to the to the actual question, what does it look like? This is more or less a vision that we have that, you know, these things might change and that people will do this. I think it varies. I mean, this going back to your question, it varies. I mean, a lot of departments are very old fashioned with, you know, grammar book approaches. This is the language. This is what we have to do. We have to get, you know, a certain amount of credit. This will be done by written work and grammar tests. And then you get other departments where you've got individuals mostly that sort of do things really differently, that invite video blogs, podcasts, creative responses to poetry, etc. And it really depends on where you go, I think, and what you look at. There's still a very sort of strong traditional set up in most departments, but I think a lot of my colleagues are doing things differently anyway within that set up. So it really depends on where you go. I think in terms of what does a modern language degree look like, it varies quite considerably across the whole range of higher education institutions.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

Is this something that, as you may know, that someone might have looked into? I mean, you know, comparing the more traditional approaches to a modern foreign language degree compared to those more innovative or creative practices. And I just wondered, does it impact on student uptake, for example, or student enjoyment or maybe even student finishing the degree and and yeah, and obtaining that degree. What do you think?

Dr Alex Mangold

That's a very interesting question. I'm not aware of studies actually looking at that and that would be obviously a bit more than that we could we could do so we could we do, we don't want to bite off more than we can chew. But this would be really interesting to look at. Does it make a difference in terms of, you know, what kind of fluency people can use at the end of their degrees? Or is it something that that would naturally sort of increase student numbers depending on the kind of modern language degree that you've got on offer? I would say from my own experience and I've seen as external examiners, that institutions things are pretty standardised in a sense, that there's quality benchmarks obviously, but within that there's quite a variety happening and it mostly depends on the type of degree scheme that people go for. So you've got a lot of combinations, for example, that have to do with international management or international politics, for example, or it's either here we've got quite a lot of joint honours degrees, so people combine it with very odd things. Sometimes you've got Spanish and biology or or we used to have computer science with German and these kinds of things.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

But I think that's great.

Dr Alex Mangold

It is because it offers a range of things you can do with it. But at the same time, what I, you know, what I'm most interested in is how is it assessed and how is it taught, and how do people actually look at getting students to respond to things as opposed to presenting them with a pre-defined kind of curriculum where you have to do this and you have to write this essay and you have to do this. And I think that would make the whole range of things on offer much more interesting to students especially when you go to schools and you talk about, have you ever thought about picking up a foreign language? You know, in there you do your presentation. People say, yeah, I don't know, it's boring. And I never. I thought about this. And why would you do it? Because everyone speaks English and these kinds of things. And then you say, but have you considered maybe doing a video response to a Spanish novel Civil War in a module such as this? And all of a sudden people say, Oh, no, I haven't. This is interesting. Yeah. And so that's the idea.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

That sounds really good because they the normal way at the most. Well, the normal the more formal way of assessment in a in a modern foreign language degree would be essay, would you say, or?

Dr Alex Mangold

It depends. I mean, usually all the universities distinguish between the language part and the content module part. So you will have the language taught as part of a core module in almost all the institutions. I know. And then on top of that, you will have content modules. This is normally how things go. And in the content modules you would write essays and you know exams at the end where you have to reflect on a particular cultural or philosophical aspect or a certain epoch, maybe, whereas in the language kind of class, there's a bit more freedom sometimes, despite the fact that there are certain criteria that have to be fulfilled. Obviously, most of these in relation to the European reference framework for for modern languages, where you go from A1 to to C2 level where but I think it is mostly the content modules that have traditional ways of assessing people like essay writing, etc. Now the problem with this is that at some point the questions will be very similar. I mean, you prepare students at some point in first year and you say, this is what we're looking for. This is how to to reply to a question with a with a well-thought out, well-constructed essay that has an argument and maybe a research question. You know, if you could come up to third year, etc., and beyond, but it's very repetitive. So you will have an essay and someone says, Oh, this is how I write an essay. And it third you they will still sort of do similar things just with different kinds of questions in relation to different kinds of topics. And if you look at creative assessment as something that could change that, you could say, okay, for example, something I do in second year with a module that I, that I, that I teach, which is called Language of Modern Drama. I ask students to creatively present a scene and maybe write it themselves and then reflect on it. And it's up to them what kind of method they use, whether they want to reflect on it as a radio play or as a presentation. I've seen short films, I've seen graphic novels. And I think this is this is then an element that even in content modules you can use and maybe explore a little bit. And that's basically what we're suggesting.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

I think it's great, but I think you might want to you might be able to expand beyond modern foreign languages as well. I mean so many degrees in the higher education have essays an assessment and it does get pretty boring for students here but I mean it's important it's a good skill to develop obviously, you know, to to be able to present an argument and use references and back up your point of view and all that. But it doesn't necessarily have to happen in writing as a formal essay as as you suggest. So I think maybe even in because I teach psychology here at De Montfort, but that could be something to to think about as well. So on one hand, you're trying to make this more appealing for students so that we can hopefully address this problem of the decline of uptake in languages, in higher education. But on the other hand, it's potentially the lecturers that we need to enthused about this.

Dr Alex Mangold

Yeah, this is this is why I didn't want to go just for creative assessment as the project. The project is designed as artistic research and creative assessment because we want people to engage with this idea of artistic research in the first place. And I went to a conference a couple of months ago where I presented the project, you know, in its initial stages at that point. And we were talking about creative assessment in several, you know, areas and content modules maybe excursions and seminars and how would you didn't change lectures, but one of the persistent questions that always came up then was, so what, what, what will I do if I'm not a creative person? Can I just change the way I teach overnight? And I think what it all boils down to is, no, you don't have to change who you are or how you teach or what you do. But you might want to explore a little bit and you might want to use a few creative means, maybe in your own work. And it could be you know, it could be simple things such as, you know, in teaching say you use role play, but you do things differently because you ask people to to submit a creative response. And whether that is a, you know, a fictitious character that people have to come up with or a situation where they reflect on a poem, doesn't really matter. You can use this as part of a of a module that is very standardised. And then you say, okay, how can I assess this? And you look at criteria such as an informative, coherent kind of presentation, and you take criteria from from other areas that you would use use normally for the assessment anyway. So it's not like you have to create new things. It's, it's more a kind of an. Invitation for people to reconsider the way they teach and do the research and also how they assess students.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

I think this is great. I love it. Can you take us through one specific example so that if anybody's listening and thinking, well, maybe I'd like to use something more creative, but I can't really see how I could make it work.

Dr Alex Mangold

There's a few there's there's a few really interesting ones. I mean, if you look at things such as, you know, cultural knowledge, etc., so we've had we've had someone actually submitting something that looked at Rudi Dutschke. You know, you might notice a student revolts and in 68, etc. In Germany, you know, people were sort of especially students were protesting because a lot of old fashioned Nazis were still in power. You know, part of the government, etc. So there was a whole a whole 68 kind of cultural revolution happening in Germany. And one of the incidents at the beginning was that Rudi Dutschke was shot by police and apparently it was an accident, etc. There was a whole discussion. People were angry, people were started sort of protesting, etc. So one of the people that sort of submitted a questionnaire, because this is how we go about things, we send out a question as we asked people to actually tell us a bit about themselves, about their research, about the teaching. And then we asked them to submit an example of a particular type of creative assessment. And one of the things that they did was they asked people to respond by drawing something or by sort of writing a poem. So that's a particular straightforward, creative kind of assessment. And it was quite interesting because we saw some of the pictures that they submitted, and one of them was Rudi Dutschke. And a lot of flames and political reference work around the edges. And it was it was a drawing, but it also had a few words sort of on it. So it was more a kind of a drawing plus collage. And what it did was it sort of presented this particular incident with the person behind the incident. So it looked at who really Dutschke actually was, what kind of student he was and why he was actually sort of protesting. So it gave us the broader kind of context of 68 and this cultural revolution in Germany. And at the same time, it looked at the more violent response that that the 68 generation was met with by people who wanted to have things done more traditionally and didn't want to touch the status quo. You know, just generally the problem that you have between generations, right. But it was very interesting to see this this image and the collage that came out of it, because there were so many elements. And you think normally students will just focus on one or two elements because this is what we want from them. Right. We say these are the learning outcomes. This is what we want you to look at and this is what we then will write the essay on. But this had so many additional things, so many secondary learning outcomes and ideas and images that you could just see that the student was really engaged with the subject matter. You could see the student thought not just about, you know, that particular information. In 68, someone was shot by the German police and it sparked, you know, several riots and the 68 Cultural Revolution, you know, you could see that they were actually thinking about the person. They were thinking about the power dynamics behind the person. And they were thinking about what this actually meant for people involved and what it then meant for the wider culture and how it changed. And I think that's a real success because in that particular instance, you could see that the student engaged with way more than just an essay question, way more than just a particular learning outcome because they were engaged in a creative process. And I think this is what makes this so interesting and exciting, this project, because you can see how students respond. And and I'm always I mean, I'm always really surprised and and blown away sometimes by the kind of student work that we see. And I think this is this is why we think this is inspiring to other people, because, you know, it creates a working environment and it creates a certain dynamic between us and our students that makes our work more interesting as well. So instead of just saying, oh, this is more interesting for the students, I think there's something to be said about our work being more interesting because we can see this kind of creative work. We can see how students can respond to something creatively, something that we taught but didn't actually predefined for them. So it's not, you know, take this and this will come out like a slot machine. It's more a kind of we give you something and I'll be interested in what you will do with it. And I think this kind of this kind of teaching, this kind of lecturing is also sort of a a certain form of self-empowerment for the students. And not every student has to do it. But, you know, you see, you know, occasionally you see a few people engaging with the process and you're just blown away by that person and that kind of creative process.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

So you always give them like a choice, I guess, because I mean, not everybody is talented in drawing, but they might have another talent so.

Dr Alex Mangold

Yeah, so, so looking back to my own module, I don't want to be talking about my own module too much, but obviously I know it because I've done it for a couple of years now and I've seen amazing results. But one of the things that really took me by surprise to start with, and this was years back when I first introduced this kind of creative assessment. And said, okay, I want to do things differently. One of the students, you know, was a sort of a very quiet student and very reserved, and there were a lot of sort of essays, etc., etc. He was he was going through the motions, you could say, as a lot of students are. And, you know, they get a get a good degree and they leave and they take up some job. But this student sort of really surprised me because he then had this creative assessment in this particular module. And what it was was a monologue, a theatrical monologue. And they can choose and this is why I'm answering that question with an example. They can choose between a variety of things. So they can either, as I said, do a presentation, they can write a scene, they can perform something in the actual workshop situation. That is the end of the seminar. Towards the end this two weeks, they've got two workshops where they can present things or they can send in a video, they can do a radio podcast, they can do creative novels, etc. It's really up to them what kind of creative outlet they choose. And this is, I think, very important. You can't predefined the creative output. You have to say, okay, I'll leave this up to you and you can make an informed decision and you can say, oh, I've never been really good at videos and stuff. I'll, I'll draw something and it's absolutely fine to do that. But this person decided that they wanted to do a dramatic monologue, and it blew me away. It was so good. I opened the assessment, I looked at it and I thought, this is absolutely first rate. You know, there wasn't a single thing I would have changed. I read through it and it was done in Germany. But, you know, so you must have proof, read it and done some work on it, etc. And I just thought, this is perfect. You know, you could put this on the stage right there and people would say, Oh my God. And it was one of these moments where I just really appreciated doing things differently because if I hadn't changed the assessment and reintroduced it in that particular module and said, okay, let, let's do something that has a certain amount of risks attached to it, I would never have had that moment, and I think it changed the way I see assessment at university or generally assessment because I want students to respond with that magic. I want students to see the opportunity to express themselves and by that create moments of self-empowerment, because this person left university and they may go off to do something completely different, but they know they can write dramatic dialogue without ever having studied theatre studies or anything else. And I think that's just marvelous.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

Yeah, it was an amazing opportunity for that student to really shine. I see, as you said, really good. I think I will finish by asking you, what do you want people to remember about this podcast on creative assessment? So if there's one thing you'd like people to remember?

Dr Alex Mangold

I think they shouldn't be afraid to change the way they assess or do their research because there is a lot of potential in every single one of the colleagues that I have on in every single student. And despite the fact that you might not immediately see it, if you offer the opportunity you will be blown away sometimes by the response that you get. And I think this is I know that we have to navigate between, you know, quality benchmarks, registry, admin people and, you know, it's difficult to manoeuvre between all of these kind of different kind of poles and setups. And, you know, modules have to be agreed upon, they have to be peer reviewed, etc. But the experience I've made throughout the past couple of years and colleagues will confirm this. If you come up with a creative element and you put it in there and as a peer review, people would normally respond with, Yes, do it, this is great. You know, no one will say, Oh, I liked the old way. I really would have another essay in that module you know.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

I get what you mean.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

So your message is to actually to lecturers. Don't be afraid to include something creative.

Dr Alex Mangold

Never be afraid.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

Like we said, you know, it doesn't have to stop at lecturers level either because this problem in the decline of of language uptake starts lower down the line. You know, it could be something that people can do at A-level or something they could do in at secondary school.

Dr Alex Mangold

Absolutely.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

I mean, there's so many different ways of, of, of of doing things. And we don't necessarily have to limit ourselves to essays and multiple choice exams and coursework.

Dr Alex Mangold

And we've had a few people actually sort of submitting questionnaires. And then on, on the actual submission, they stated, I'm a secondary school teacher, I've been doing these creative things. I don't know whether it will be suitable for your project. And I said, yes, absolutely. So I got back to them and we had emails, you know, asking us about this and I said, Absolutely, please submit this because this is just a sort of a starting point. You know, ideally we want this to be a platform where people get inspired. They go to the hub, they say, Oh, this is interesting, I would like to do this, but it can influence politicians curriculum designs. If you look to Wales, for example, last year we introduced a new curriculum that involves creative elements in all stages of secondary and primary education. So. So politicians and those who have the power. To change these things on a on a grander scale, have woken up to the fact that this will create individuals that are more self empowered, that are more interested in learning, etc., etc., and it now forms part of the world's curriculum.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

Brilliant. Well, I can't wait to see the Hub and be able to access it and browse through it. So thank you so much Alex for joining us today and telling us about creative assessment.

Dr Alex Mangold

Thank you.

Dr Marie-Josee Bisson

In the next podcast, we will be talking about using virtual reality in the classroom with Dr. Elizabeth Enkin. So that should be really interesting as well. And as we finishing today's episode, I just want to remind you to take 5 minutes to go in our shownotes and click on the link for our survey. The survey will help inform us about what you liked about the series and what you'd like to hear about next. It is also the research aspect of this podcast project, so thank you for listening and thank you to the British Academy for funding our podcast. I'm Dr. Marie-Josee Bisson, and you've been listening to the Language Scientists podcast.

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