Involving others in assessments Essay

The assessment process in a beauty college involves many different people. Starting with the students that need to be assessed and who need be told the criteria which they are being assessed against so that they can try meet these needs. The teachers of the students need to be provided with a curriculum to teach and have access to various forms of information related to their subject matter so they can draw on these for course notes or offer extra material for students to give them a broader understanding of the subject. The assessors themselves need to know what facilities the college has with regards to where the tests are obtained from, what time frame is allocated, what different forms of assessment need to be conducted, what setting is in place be it a classroom or practical room or a simulation of a salon with a member of public coming in to be the client. They need to know who else in the college is qualified to assess should they have any questions and who the internal verifiers are to report to. Employers at the college need to provide assessment opportunities and find ways of networking with the staff through newsletters or internal meetings to identify good practice in assessing across the board and to maintain consistency throughout the staff. The internal verifiers are there to check the quality of assessing and to measure and improve further quality of assessments. External verifiers are needed to check that the internal verifiers are doing their job properly and check the quality of the work being done. They are usually given a selection of pre assessed papers so they can re-assess them to check for accuracy in assessing and to be able to check the standard of a college and report back to the awarding body that a college is able to claim certification for their students, or if the college needs to amend certain criteria before claiming certification. So in my college experience I was taught my course material by various teachers, assessed by teachers by written tests or projects or in the practical classroom. The teachers had to report to the principal of the college for our results and the principal often came into the assessing rooms while we were busy with class or doing tests. An external examining body from the international guild of beauty therapy was asked to do our final assessments and we were given lists stating what the examiner would be looking for. We were assessed according to the international level set by the beauty guild and only if we passed with a stipulated percentage were we awarded our qualification. Peer and Self assessment: Self assessment allows the student to work out their own strengths and weaknesses and tailor their own learning plan to best suit themselves. This works well when you have a motivated student who is willing to admit their own setbacks to themselves and strive to address these and move forward in the right direction with a better sense of what they want to achieve and how to do that. Peer assessment can be very helpful in that students get to go over their own knowledge of the subject being assessed while they assess their peer therefore doing revision and also being more aware of what they may not know or of how their peer does something better than they would have done and learning from them. I find self and peer evaluation very helpful in a beauty college especially as it is such a practical course and a lot of time is spent practicing treatments on your peers or being the client to be practiced on. When a student is being the therapist they can carry out a treatment and assess themselves on how well they have learnt the procedure and where they get stuck and need help. They will be more confident in asking their peer for help or to give them feedback about their treatment and in-turn be able to use this feedback to modify their work and learn from this. When a student is being the client this is a great opportunity for them to really feel what different types of pressure feel like and what feel good and what doesn’t and use that to adapt their own techniques. They learn what it feels like to be on the therapy bed and be aware of the sounds around them that the student therapist makes or the questions they ask and what makes sense and works and what doesn’t. This is an invaluable way that students can improve themselves and be able to help their peers improve by giving them accurate feedback. How assessment arrangements can be adapted to learners: Students learn best in slightly different ways depending on what approach works best for them. A widely used model of learning style is Flemmings’ s (2001) Visual Auditory Kinesthetic (VAK) model. If students are visual learners, they prefer to use images, pictures, colors, and maps to organize information and communicate with others. They work well from worksheets and the whiteboard and do their best on more theory based assessments like short questions, multiple choice, true and false or essays. In their practical assessments they will do well when needing to chart information the client has told them and write up skin diagnosis or plan future care appointments. If they are auditory learners they are the students who retain information better when the information is reinforced through sound. So they prefer class lectures rather than being given textbooks to read. These students do much better when their assessment are asked with short oral questions during class or explaining to an examiner why they are performing a certain treatment or using a certain method to perform a task. Being able to read their questions out aloud to themselves will also help them registered better what is required from them in the assessment. If they are kinesthetic learners then they prefer to be involved in activities. They learn through applying their knowledge practically by writing out notes during lectures or telling another person what they have learnt or performing practical treatments. Studying beauty therapy is a great choice for kinesthetic learns as much of the course involves taking part and learning through movement and a big part of your grading comes from performing treatments and demonstrating your skills to the assessors. For these learners doing theory assessments they can be kept motivated by doing diagrams or plotting graphs or doing oral reports so they are fulfilling their need for movement in learning.