625 Week #7 - Curation vs. Collection

Though the link that was provided to access and read “Designing Curation for Student Engagement” (2019) never worked no matter how much time I devoted to waiting for it connect forcing me to search the internet myself for this article causing much wasted time, there was a payoff once I got to it.  The prompt for this blog entry begins by asking “Is there a difference between curating and collecting?” and I believe that yes, there is absolutely a difference!  The article, once I finally got to it, stated “studies suggest that curation can be more effective as a means to engage students in processes of assessment and feedback than almost any other activity (McDowell et al 2006).”  Curating in my frame of mind, suggests thoughtfully assembling materials to support a curricular goal.  Collecting in my frame of mind suggests, gathering materials not necessarily to support a curricular goal or even an overarching goal of any kind.  One curates a collection of images to make a certain point, all the entries of a curated collection work together to express the curator’s intent.  One creates a collection of materials for the fun of it, or perhaps to keep those materials in one place for their own use.  The bottom line point is, a collection doesn’t have an agenda, a curated collection does.  This is how I would explain it were I to be mentoring a teacher who is focusing on meaningful forms of assessment and multiple tools that may be of value to us and our students.  A student curated group of artifacts can be very much similar to a portfolio or could even be a part of said portfolio.  A curated group of artifacts that is student generated and curated over time with formative feedback from us as learning facilitators, is great for students because it allows them to express their learning in their way, and it’s great for us because it gives us insight into the mastery our students have gained (or not).  The article, that my browser is STILL as I write this trying to access LOL, states “curating is an exceptionally powerful way to engage students. “it forces you to commit to your work’, asserts a PhD student at UCL, describing her experience of arranging and showing paintings.”  The next part of the prompt asks “How can curating be an authentic assessment tool or is this an inappropriate use of a digital activity?”  This a powerful question actually.  Is it ok for us to ask and/or require our students to put their personal learning experiences online?  Does that violate their privacy?  I can say very honestly that my jury is still out on this question!  I’m very interested in asking students, over the next semester, to curate a Pinterest board about Drama 1, but then again, I am concerned about student privacy.  I feel like some students will shy away from genuine, authentic engagement in a curation activity due to privacy concerns, but I also feel like it’s not really a privacy violation because nobody really knows the identity of the curator.  Maybe the ticket is in the criteria we provide for such a curation.  Maybe if we’re mindful and careful in what we ask students to curate publically, we can overcome student concerns.  I haven’t come to an absolute position on this yet.  But again, I am feeling VERY interested in asking students to curate.  We were asked to include “3 specific concepts or comments” from this course which included the ability to reference a video that didn’t work.  So, I decided to do some research above and beyond the materials provided in this course and came across a fantastic article called “To Boost Higher Order Thinking, Try Curation” (2017) by Jennifer Gonzalez.  This article, which I HIGHLY recommend, states (among other gems including how curation fits into Bloom’s Taxonomy and specific examples of how you can ask students to curate) that ”The process can be applied to all kinds of content: A person could curate a collection of articles, images, videos, audio clips, essays, or a mixture of items that all share some common attribute or theme.“  This helps me address the final component of this prompt which is “One last thing to consider in this post: what kinds of legal and ethical issues could be an issue in curating? If you believe there are none, please state that and explain why you feel this way. If you feel there are or could be legal or ethical issues, please explain your thinking.”  I think there for sure could be ethical issues if a student curates plagiarized material in any way, shape or form.  But if we as part of our formative work with curating students stay on top of our students’ work, this can be averted.  Other than that, a curated group of materials could include materials that are already public, as described in the afore mentioned article, so as long as our student curators credit people properly, ethical and legal issues should be averted.  As I conclude this blog post, my browser is STILL trying to access the provided resource.  Sometimes you just gotta solve problems for yourself!
 
References
 
Gonzalez, Jennifer  (2017 April 15) To Boost Higher Order Thinking, Try Curation [Website] CultofPedagogy.com, https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/curation/
 
Hallett, R., Grindle, N. Designing Curation for Student Engagement (2019 November) [Journal] Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal Vol 2, Issue 3, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10085668/7/Grindle_Designing%20curation%20for%20student%20engagement_VoR.pdf
 
McDowell, L., Sambell, K., Bazin, V., Penlington, R., Wakelin, D., Wickes, H., & Smailes, J. (2006). Assessment for Learning: Current Practice Exemplars from the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning [Website] www.academia.edu, https://www.academia.edu/23651832/Assessment_for_Learning_Current_practice_exemplars_from_the_Centre_for_Excellence_in_Teaching_and_Learning
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