When is a Picnic a Poster?

Abstract

When is a Picnic a Poster? Since September 2014 the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire has been employing a picnic basket as both a metaphor and a physical receptacle for staff ideas about learning and teaching. Staff were invited to put into the basket notes, sketches or other forms of information, therefore turning it into a file or folder of assessment and feedback material available to all. The notion of using a picnic basket in part came from a going-out project that involved an actual staff picnic on Hampstead Heath, a trip designed to break the monotony of the humdrum workings of university life. The idea was to reinvigorate what can often turn out to be dull staff gatherings, enlivening the discussion in a convivial manner. The day proved to be a success, bringing to light and helping to solve problems in the assessment workload. Working outside the university helped us to see such potentially debilitating problems in a new and more manageable light. The project continues to this day. In the picnic basket you can see a small book containing an account of this day out, and a number of other artefacts including documents dealing with the Good Practice of peer and self-assessment strategies. There are also a number of Imaps in which recent visual research is recorded. The basket also contains a few not-always-pleasant surprises!