Reimagining a ‘Mantle of the Expert’ Viva Voce for the Zoom environment

Description

COVID sent this face-to-face Viva Voce online into a Zoom environment and students and academics were both relieved and thrilled by the reimagining of the assessment task. Utilising the a ‘Mantle of the Expert’ (Heathcote & Bolton, 1994; Heathcote & Herbert, 1985) teaching system, this assessment as learning task positioned 1st year Master of Teaching students in role as expert classroom teachers speaking to their Principal about a classroom management dilemma they had managed. The ‘Mantle of the Expert’ approach places the student at the centre of learning with the facilitator’s role being to create the conditions whereby a mantle of leadership, knowledge, competency and understanding grows around the student during the task (Aitken, 2014). Happily, the online iteration not only maintained the task’s capacity to build and demonstrate students’ knowledge of classroom management, oracy and reflexivity, but the implementation of a self-managed student Zoom booking system also enhanced student agency and developed organisational skills relevant to professional practice. Furthermore, the readily available meeting recordings facilitated task moderation and will allow excerpts to be employed as a teaching resource and peer evaluation in subsequent units.

Period	12 Nov 2020
Event title	Council of Australasian University Leaders in Learning and Teaching conference : #outoftheblue: A virtual journey through resilience, recovery and reimagining. : Challenge accepted! Re-assessing assessment in 2020
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	National