Learning Review/LR Assessment



Its time now to think about how to present your application to the panel. Your assessment is likely to have two major components, your presentation and your submission portfolio.

Using Learning Outcomes to structure your submission
Understanding the learning outcomes of the papers you are seeking assessment for will help you work out how to structure your portfolio. They can be used as the framework for your submission. Remember your learning journey has been through your practice, so your presentation is not going to look or sound the same as a learner who has been taught these papers. Have confidence in your integrated understandings about your context. Experience is a powerful learning space.

The learning outcomes for the two papers can be found here. (insert hyperlink) Keep these learning outcomes close to you as an important reference.

Structuring your application for assessment
Now that you have thought about your learning over the years it is time to decide how to structure your presentation and in what format it will occur. The format is covered more fully here.

It is important to organise your thoughts clearly at this point. You are needing to determine a structure, but to give yourself time to do this. It is often an iterative process and it is always linked to the ongoing nature of your reflective process. Organise your thoughts clearly and ensure their linkages make sense. Be orderly in this work, but allow for ideas that were once separate to suddenly have a connection.

Be careful not to be overly descriptive and miss the focus of your learning. The analysis of learning is one of the most important parts of your application for assessment. Remember it is not just what you have learnt but, more importantly you must provide some analysis and discuss how you have applied and reflected your understandings in practice. Analysing your learning involves asking yourself what the significance of your learning is for a range of affected groups such as learners and colleagues and the institution you work for.

Now that you have identified the key messages of your presentation you can move to consider how best to structure your presentation to show the depth and extent of your understandings that you bring to your practice. Give some time to this. It is another aspect of preparation that may need to be iterative. Seek to communicate with others, particularly your facilitator. Book at least one session with your facilitator to get feedback. Consider the feedback you have been given. It may be difficult to accept because by now you have invested considerable personal energy, but your facilitator brings a perspective of an outsider and that can be hugely helpful in helping you ensure the key messages are able to be understood by the assessors.

Determine how you will present to the assessors. How will you hold the key points in the order you wish to make them? Will you use a tool like powerpoint ? Will you write a major document? Will you have artifacts that you wish to introduce at various points? An agenda for the presentation is usually very helpful for assessors, particularly if each section has a reminder of what the purpose is.

Evidence
Evidence must be used in a way that clearly links to what you are presenting and to your learning. Thinks carefully about what evidence to use and ensure you have approval to use it Think about how you will use to use evidence to illustrate your knowledge/skills and demonstrate the extent to which you can analyse your own learning. Think broadly about the type of evidence you will use.

The ability to select and evaluate evidence and bring this forward coherently is an important dimension of your application.

The evidence must be:


 * valid – connected to your learning


 * authentic – you must have contributed to its development

sufficient- for the purpose of the assessment
 * current – this ensures that it is connected to your most current understandings, unless it you see it as a seminal piece of evidence that sets the scene clearly


 * reliable – you could show how this evidence has informed other aspects of your work, to show that the learning you have gained can inform other dimensions of your practice

Your assessment presentation
You may find it helpful to ask yourself the following questions and make notes as you shape your presentation to the assessors:

•	Why did I wish to take the module?

• What did the process of identifying my learning involve?

• What were key learning moments in your career that you identified as areas to • make claims in and why?

• Have I discovered anything about myself or my work role from my claim?

• Has the module changed the way I approach or think about my work? Have I discovered new areas of learning that I and/or my employer have not previously recognised or fully used – or has the process confirmed what I already knew?

• How easy/difficult was it to identify learning and provide evidence of it?

• Has the identification of AOLs made me think about areas I wish to focus on in the future?

• Has the development of the portfolio and my reflection on it influenced/altered how I view myself, my work role(s) and/or my career aspirations?

Your presentation is your own reflection on what you have learnt from the module.Consequently, there is no right or wrong way of structuring it. However, it may help you to decide by knowing what the assessor will want to see:

‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘with what consequences’)?
 * the development of a reasoned train of thought (typically answering the questions


 * sufficient analysis to suggest that you have seriously reflected upon the learning process involved in compiling your application for assessment


 * the effectiveness of your communication.