Issues in the assessment of creative musical theatre and digital DiY: UK lockdown versus Constructive Alignment

This article considers the assessment of collaborative, creative theatre by students in Higher Education, made as what theatre scholar and educationalist Kathy Dacre refers to as “simulated professional practice”. During UK lockdown (2020-22) for the COVID-19 pandemic, difficulties arose with the assessment of students’ digital and hybrid theatre pieces that could not have been foreseen many years earlier at the point of module and programme design. Drawing on critiques from the field of Performing Arts and of Education, John Biggs’ widely adopted outcome-based approach “Constructive Alignment” is problematised here as a structure for teaching and assessing creative work. Constructive Alignment is outlined and contradictions elucidated between this framework and the freer ethos of “DiY theatre”, a model of creation by which much contemporary performance-making work at HEIs is undertaken. In conclusion, benefits of “DiY theatre” are considered in relation to Constructivism, without the rigidity of Constructive Alignment. Such considerations encompass freer creative and aesthetic output, the facility for real-time artistic development alongside technological advancement, and social inclusion. Recommendations for future practice include incorporating the above more formally into a model of “curriculum co-creation”, and more broadly, opening a space for a practical discourse on how we value and assess creativity in Higher Education.