Self-assessment

Self-assessment provides you with an opportunity to self-evaluate, or make judgments about your learning process and products of learning. The process is usually guided by criteria that the mentees or program organisers have agreed on with mentees. However, it doesn’t have to be limited to what we suggest, we encourage you to think of self-assessment as a chance of understanding where you are now, in reference to where you were at the beginning of the program.

Self-assessment is useful in two ways: you can assess the end product, or outcomes of your OHM journey (ex. How your project documentation looks like, or if you are now familiar with licence options available). But you can also assess the process of learning (ex. Was peer review useful for you? Did you feel secure enough to participate in the cohort calls? Were you consistent with assignments, were they useful for you? Which are your strengths and areas for improvement, etc.?)

To perform a self-assessment it is important to understand which were your expectations when you joined OHM. This is why we insisted so much with setting concrete goals at the beginning of the program: the only way to assess if you improved is by comparing yourself now to yourself earlier; there are no recipes here.

If you are following this curriculum as part of your Open Hardware Makers program, your mentor will guide you through this self-assessment process. However, you can anticipate some of it by taking a look at the assignment below.

Assignment: Complete the self-assessment exercise

Draft a reflection on your program journey, consider questions like these (but don’t let them limit your response if you have more to say!):

• How do you define open hardware?
• How have you changed as a team member and person over the course of your project? By following this curriculum?
• What have you learned?
• What do you struggle with in leading and working in the open? What do you struggle with in the curriculum?
• What surprised you the most?
• What seemed easiest?
• What seemed most difficult?
• What are your most important takeaways or lessons learned?
• What would you do differently if you could begin again? What will you do differently in your next project?

Invite your contributors and peers to read and comment on your thoughts!

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