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Jana Dlouhá et al.
learning: “surface”, “deep” and “achieving learning approach” (Biggs, 1987). Research proved that
student approaches to learning considerably affect learning processes in terms of their efficiency and
have an impact on the final student’s performance. The learning environment factors are explored in
studies that concentrate on the educational requirements, the quality of the teaching and the nature of
the assessment, but also student interests and support, the enthusiasm shown by the instructor and
the opportunity for students to manage their own learning process (Richardson, 2009).
New methodologies for assessment of the learning environment and its psychical (motivations) and
social determinants were subsequently developed and numerous psychometric measurement
techniques based on questionnaires assessing student learning experiences have already been
tested so that they can be applied in practice as evaluation instruments for educational management
purposes. The interest of researchers is mostly determined by the attempt to improve student
performance by influencing in particular the learning environment as an external prerequisite for a
good learning process and consequent success.
1.2 Assessment process
Assessment is a rather complex task both at an institutional or system level, and at the level of
learning processes. Different factors that play a role in these processes should be aligned: not only
educational goals and content, but also tasks and assessment. Evaluators of higher education
teaching agree that the most commonly misaligned factor is assessment and “most assessment
strategies tend to focus on what is easy to measure rather than what is important.” For success in
learning, all different aspects of the learning process are relevant – for example, social interactions
play a role in which students are engaged when they carry out their tasks, such as collaboration and
teamwork, relationships with their tutors, and also learning environment factors. Best teaching
assessment practices in higher education should capture these aspects and therefore focus on
“critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, curiosity, concern for ethical issues” as well as “breadth
and depth of specific knowledge”; they also reflect the “methodologies and standards of evidence
used to create that knowledge”. Attention paid to these factors is a requirement of active,
constructivist pedagogy, but in practice, in most cases assessment is based upon multiple-choice
tests or academic essays (Reeves, 2006).
Higher education has therefore many specific features that make the assessment task even more
complex than at lower educational levels. Rather ambitious evaluation goals include not only
assessment of outcomes, but also reflection of the learning process itself by teachers AND students
themselves; assessment techniques comprise peer assessment, self-assessment, authentic
assessment and other sophisticated methods. All of these assessment techniques require that
students evaluate work of the same kind that they themselves are producing, and thus also obtain
experience of realistic evaluation (Sadler, 2005). Besides this, they are aware of assessment criteria
that are transparent and could apply to their own performance.
1.3 Social learning perspective
A social learning definition will be used further as an explanatory framework for the case study
(Wenger, 2000); it describes this phenomenon as “an interplay between social competence and
personal experience; it is a dynamic, two-way relationship between people and social learning
systems in which they participate. In this constellation, the necessary competences are negotiated
through the experience of direct participation: engagement in joint enterprise requires that members
of a community are competent to contribute to it, to interact and mutually reflect on this interaction;
and they also share a common repertoire of communal resources such as language, routines, etc.
According to Reed, social learning “occurs through social interactions and processes between actors
within a social network, either through direct interaction, e.g., conversation, or through other media,
e.g., mass media, telephone, or Web 2.0 applications” (Reed et al. 2010). A role for the open virtual
space such as Wiki in education is also reported by other authors (Wheeler et al, 2008; Wheeler &
Wheeler, 2009).
2. Case study - MPG&SD course in the VCSE network
The Multiple Perspectives on Globalization and Sustainable Development (MPG&SD) course ran over
the 2009/2010 European winter semester. The course was part of the international VCSE network of
European universities and participated in by students from Germany and the Czech Republic. The
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