TLC Staff Focus Group Research
 During 2005 the TLC project team held focus groups with lecturers who taught in the subjects of Hospitality, Sport, Leisure and Tourism from Bournemouth University, Southampton Solent University and Oxford Brookes University.
- The aim of the focus groups was to evaluate staff experience of assessment, particularly non and partly-written assessment, with an emphasis on students with dyslexia.
- As with the student focus groups, a visual element was incorporated into the session, with lecturers selecting images that represented their emotional feelings surrounding assessment. Lecturers chose images that for them illustrated their best and worst experiences of assessment and these images were then discussed in detail during the focus group.
Staff focus group poster (positive experiences of assessment)
Staff focus group poster (negative experiences of assessment)
The aims of the focus groups were to:
- Investigate how assessments influence learning behaviour.
- Explore lecturers' experiences of students with dyslexia.
- Explore lecturers' likes and diskiles about assessment methods.
- Find out how lecturers' might be enabled to assess learning better.
This research method was chosen for a number of reasons:
- Participants could answer in their own words; we wanted to know what they really thought of assessment, not what they thought they should be saying.
- We were looking for suprising and new information, this was an initial piece of research taking place during the early stages of the project.
- we hoped the group setting would give staff permission to speak as well as stimulating ideas via debate.
- It mirrored the approach chosen for the student focus groups, which could allow for comparisons.
Table of results from the lecturer focus groups
Lecturers likes and dislikes about assessment (McCafferty et al 2005)
 Bibliography on the use of the visual in research
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