Livingstone Academy Bournemouth (LAB) aims to help our pupils develop the knowledge, skills and mindsets they need to thrive in the modern world. To achieve this, our curriculum and assessment is underpinned by transdisciplinary learning. Transdisciplinary learning at LAB involves exploring a universal and timeless concept through single subject lenses and then bringing the knowledge and skills from the different subjects together in a way that is applicable to the real world. By rigorously mapping learning pathways, we break down long-term goals into shorter-term milestones so students can make progress no matter what project or topic they're working on.
As a new school – LAB opened in 2021 – many of our staff are unfamiliar with transdisciplinary design and assessment. That’s why we participated in Rethinking Assessment’s action research pilot, which connected us with like-minded organisations around the UK. What follows is a summary of our experience delivering a transdisciplinary learning and assessment pilot.
Fresh thinking: Developing a transdisciplinary pilot
The set aim of Rethinking Assessment’s pilot was to deliver a transdisciplinary unit on migration. Our multidisciplinary teaching teams – who know our students best – decided that a video game approach would be the ideal way to engage students on the topic. We called it ‘LAB Game Changers’.
Within any of LAB’s transdisciplinary units, the starting point is always a ‘hook’ event – a deliberately exciting activity that brings students on board. For LAB Game Changers, we welcomed a video game designer from EA Sports who spoke to our Year 7 students about what it's like working in the industry. We followed this with two days of intensive workshops, exploring – at a high level – the skills and knowledge needed to develop a fully working game.
One workshop explored how mathematical rules form the basis of gaming mechanics – from player decision-making to how characters move around. Students attended other workshops, too; animation and character design, soundtrack production, creative writing, and of course, coding. This whistle-stop tour through the games development process whetted students’ appetites for more. Afterwards, they entered a three-week skills development phase. This expanded their skills and knowledge before they were placed into multidisciplinary teams to complete the project.
The importance of clear learning goals and pre-assessment
LAB’s learning goals always focus on whole school progressions. From the day they join us to the day they leave, the aim is for each student to progress along a continuum of knowledge and skills in every subject. Much of LAB’s work therefore involves developing and honing valid and reliable progressions from Early Years to GCSE.
It follows that assessment against key milestones along said progressions are the cornerstone of any unit we deliver. Exciting projects are great. But if they don’t measurably improve student outcomes, why bother? This is why we identify and define objectives early. For example, to achieve their long-term computer science goals, one short-term progression might be for students to demonstrate their ability to code a particular set of functional sequences. Success criteria are defined in a rubric, reflecting one step in the student's overall journey.
For LAB Game Changers, the skills development phase not only helped improve student knowledge and skills. It also allowed us to evaluate each student, helping us target individual learning and providing a benchmark against which we could measure outcomes. The pre-assessment data also helped teaching staff determine the makeup of each design team. For example, we didn’t want to place students with an aptitude for narrative writing into a coding role if they weren’t comfortable with the latter. While LAB embraces learning through failure, this project was about allowing students to experience success and prove they could produce a game marketable to external stakeholders.
Teamwork and individual success go hand in hand
Placing students into teams marked what was essentially a second launch of LAB Game Changers. Students had to collaborate on developing their final product – a working video game for an end-of-term showcase exhibition. Reflecting the real world, each team member took responsibility for a different aspect of development – one focusing on game mechanics and coding in Scratch, one writing the narrative, another designing the soundtrack, and another working on the aesthetics.
The computing focus was for the students to develop their programming skills and build understanding of the principles of sequence, selection and iteration. After a bootcamp on how to create games in Scratch, one member of the team focused on game mechanics and style, helping to plan the main aspects of the game. Another led the coding aspects to help realise the mechanics.
These clearly defined roles (and, crucially, their success criteria) helped students work in teams while making it possible to assess individual progression. It also reflected how people in the workplace are evaluated on their performance and allowed us to map each student’s teaching and learning needs.
Showcase event and feedback
The pinnacle of LAB Game Changers was a showcase exhibition. This provided a solid deadline for students to aim for, again reflecting the workplace. While the project met its bumps in the road, we’re delighted that every team created a product with extremely imaginative scenarios and fully-functioning game mechanics. Sharing their work with adults and industry professionals improved their communication and presentation skills, too.
Employers including EA Sports, Centre VR, Bournemouth University and Talewind attended the event. They said the games were of a much higher quality than they would have expected from 11 and 12-year-olds.
Afterwards, Den Murphy, LAB’s Technology Coordinator, reflected on the project:
“Our eager bunch of Year 7 students did a wonderful job, especially with the development of their coding skills. Our 'Directors of Technology' have really tested their resilience with the debugging. Coding is very much a creative endeavour as well as a technical one, and I’ve been particularly impressed with the wide range of approaches to producing the different gaming mechanics. A big aim here was to build effective collaboration skills and this will put them in good stead for future team projects”.
Students also shared their experience of working on the project: “I faced a few challenges as the ‘Director of Aesthetics’ – making the music match the events and mood of the game was difficult, but it worked out really well in the end,” said one Year 7. “The migration quest game helped me to build my coding skills like using conditional operators and loops,” said another.
We also welcomed primary school children from our wider community who came in to play the games. Young children are unflinchingly honest, so their praise was very welcome. One girl said she was inspired to learn more about migration, while another couldn’t wait to learn coding skills in Year 7.
Measuring improved outcomes
While the exhibition helped boost student confidence and provided an opportunity to hone their public speaking skills, it didn’t directly affect individual outcomes. That’s where our final assessment came in. Rather than a typical end-point assessment, it was delivered via an evaluation rubric. We had one rubric per team, with individuals assessed on their particular criteria. This resulted in an overall team mark, which is great for running competitions with prizes as incentives. The idea is to make learning fun, after all.
From a teaching and learning perspective, though, it’s individual progress that counts. Which is why pupils also received personal marks. While we had checkpoints throughout the project to keep them on track, the ultimate aim was to support learners’ progress towards long-term goals. Their final mark helped identify where they were on their overall journey, giving them something tangible to take into their next transdisciplinary project.
While our approach is still a work in progress, it's proving successful so far. We’re not there yet, but we’ve learned a lot and are already making changes. In future, we hope to promote better student self-assessment, using more comprehensive rubrics to measure success against fully mapped progression pathways. LAB is just one year old, but we’re hugely proud of our staff and pupils. Rethinking Assessment’s pilot has inspired us to be our best. We hope, in turn, that our story can inspire other schools seeking new ways of delivering learning and assessment.
Nia Treharne is Director of Curriculum and Innovation at Livingstone Academy Bournemouth