Fail better. The potential of assessment in education for reflective practice

“How do you deal with students that are in danger of failing?” This was one of the more memorable questions during my job interview at the University of Limerick. As lecturers we might share, and in fact we do to a surprisingly large extent, a tacit understanding of what qualifies as ‘good work’ – and what doesn’t. At the same time it is difficult, to say the least, to impart to the students a sense of quality and the ability to judge. “You tell them plainly and explain clearly where and why they went wrong, what they can do about it, and offer your support in the process,” I replied, or something along those lines. The problem, of course, is to be clear about the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ (and if they exist in the first place) and hence about the criteria we apply to student work, and how to make them explicit. – In the following, I will expand on concrete experiences in our emerging architecture programme at the University of Limerick and how we try to address this problem.