Formal Assessment Results Photography 2: Landscape

For the fourth time during my studies with the OCA, I have spent the past few weeks checking my student email account, waiting on the final results for the formal assessment of my work against the Photography 2: Landscape module; these results landed in my student inbox on 7^th December 2017.

It was never going to be easy transitioning my studies from level one photography (HE4) to level two (HE5) in my study pathway, there is so much more expected of us as we climb the education ladder, although I did feel that I had put in the required amount work during the 18-months of studying the landscape genre and therefore felt a little disappointed with my final mark; there is no one but myself to criticise for this (should I be criticising my work and effort?), and a detailed breakdown of the assessment criteria can be found below.

Assessed Unit Photography 2: Landscape Feedback (please comment on achievement against assessment criteria)
	Range 0-35		Mark 23
Demonstration of technical and visual skills Materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and composition skills	Very competent technical and visual skills.
	Range 0-20		Mark 11
Quality of outcome Content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner with discernment.  Conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas	Competent realisation of ideas, presented well, showing judgement.  Reasonably effective grasp of ideas and communication of visual ideas.
	Range 0-25	Mark 15
Demonstration of creativity Imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice	Very good synthesis of analytical and creative thinking.  Creative, takes risks with imaginative and successful outcomes.  Evidence of a developing personal voice
	Range 0-20	Mark 9
Context Reflection, research, (evidenced in learning logs).  Critical thinking (evidenced in critical review).	Variable levels of self-reflection and research, and poor analysis and synthesis of information.
Visual Arts Level 2 Summative Assessment Mark (%)	100	58

Overall comments and feed forward

There are some strong individual images and a particularly creative response to assignment 6; which perhaps points a way forward.  What needs to be expanded on is a sense of driven developing narrative in the work.

This can be aided by a concentrated and continuing contextualisation of the work in order to discover and develop the themes which are progressive for you which will take your work to the next level.

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For a comparison of previous assessment results, my TAOP assessment can be found here, my Digital Photographic Practice assessment results here and my final level 1 course, People and Place here.

As I have done before, I sent an email to my tutor for the course, who came back with the following response.

I’ll admit, that I thought you would have received a higher grade.  It seems the assessors were hard on the contextual side of your work; your technical skills and quality of outcome are good.  Strangely, there is an art to assessing art; I would have thought your context was a band higher, you had made some good points and observations during your studies.

At the end of every module I undertake during this course of study, I do feel that my labour on all aspects of the work, both photographically and literally, improves and although my assessor states that I have created some strong individual images and that assignment 6 was particularly creative, it would appear that once again my reflection, research and critical thinking have let me down.  Having received such high marks for my Photography 1: People and Place assessment, I was confident that my results this time would continue along the same lines, although this do not appear to be the case as I have seen a dramatic dip in my mark.  On the bright side, this is not the lowest mark received at assessment; TAOP 57%, Digital Photographic Practice 52%, People and Place 68% and Landscape 58%, although there certainly seems to be a trend!

It would appear that I have reverted back to my old habits surrounding context, which having seen an improvement in this area during my last assessment, I am disappointed to see a low mark this time round and instead of seeing the comment “evidence of self-reflection and research, and satisfactory ability to analyse and synthesise information” I once again have the comment “variable levels of self-reflection and research, and poor analysis and synthesis of information” for my feedback; the marks against the other assessment criteria are good and above 50% of the assessment requirement.

Having spoken with my current tutor about these results, where I shared my disappointment surrounding the feedback and the lower mark, he said that I should not be disheartened as my overall score was above average, this seems to be the general consensus when I look at the threads of discussion on the OCA forum “I think it’s work reiterating that anyone in the 50-60 band has done well and met the expectation against every other photography student in the country so well done!” and with some work specifically around context, I should be able to improve on the results and progress in my next assessment, although if I continue at this current level, I should still be able to work towards my degree when this current course comes to an end.

The transition between level one (HE4) and level two (HE5) was never going to be easy, I am not academically minded and have never studied at this level so in hindsight, I am doing better than my fundamental education dictated.  Needless to say, this has given me a wakeup call and although I may not need to work any harder to get the results I want, I certainly need to think about the way I work and what I need to include in my writings to move forward.