Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the following contributions:
All the SPACE Project Partnership Representatives listed in full on the inside
rear cover of this document.
The members of the SPACE Project Management Team and the Advisory
Group: Robert Angell, Brian Chalkley, Lyn Coffman, Adam Crawford, Sue
Burkill, Maria Donkin, Graham Green, Andy Hannan, David Harwood, Mick
Healey, Margaret Herrington, Siobhan MacAndrew, Chris Ricketts, Ivan
Sidgreaves (Chair of the Management Group), Brenda Smith, Barbara
Thompson, Mike Wray and Neil Witt.
Those colleagues from the Management Team and the Project Partnership
Representatives who took on the additional task of trialling alternative and
inclusive assessment case studies: Sue Burkill, Dave Easterbrook, Pauline
Evans, David Harwood, Bob Keys, Mo Kiziewicz and Caroline Pullée.
Colleagues who so generously contributed to the SPACE Conference held in
Plymouth in November 2005: Dave Easterbrook (Senior Lecturer in Civil and
Structural Engineering, University of Plymouth); Professor Lewis Elton
(Visiting Professor of Higher Education, University of Manchester); Professor
Brenda Smith (Associate Director of the Programme Directorate of the HE
Academy); Liz Sutherland (Policy Advisor, Equality Challenge Unit); Robert
Angell, Lyn Coffman, Hannah Roy and Annabel Short (Student Panel
Members).
Melanie Parker, who for two years of this three-year project acted as Project
Co-ordinator and organised the day-to-day activities, including the Project
surveying and supervising of the data input. She also conducted a literature
review, co-supporting the first part of Section 5 of this document.
Rocio Martinez-Alvarez, the Project Administrator who, with immense
amounts of patience, clarified and ratified the data, often at absurdly short
notice.
Pride of place in our thanks must go to the several hundred students who
participated in the SPACE Project in a variety of ways. It is not an
exaggeration to say that without their unselfish endeavours this Project would
not communicate so authoritatively.
We are especially indebted to the students who made multiple contributions to
this valuable work. Answering questionnaires which is never a popular
activity, least of all annually over a three year period, attending student focus
group meetings, being prepared to be interviewed one-to-one and participate
in the trialling of alternative and inclusive assessments are commitments
indeed, especially in the face of the prior commitment of degree level studies.
Most of the students, as disabled people, had to be prepared to be open and
self-disclosing about issues that could sometimes be difficult and emotionally
charged.
Given these levels of commitment it is nonetheless a necessity that our
student respondents remain anonymous, as this was our pledge to them for
agreeing to make their experiences and ideas known to us and available for
dissemination to the sector. We feel that their singular and combined
contributions will be key factors in the change process of promoting inclusive
assessments, a not insignificant aspect of the pressing need to make higher
education more equitable.