PEDAGOGICAL
PLANNING AND ASSESSMENT COMPETENCE: Assessment, evaluation and feedback
Competence goals: You understand the meaning and
goals of assessment in the learning process.
We already had a chance to try assessment and
feedback in practice at the last webinar, where we had to review our
fellow-students’ blogs and give them feedback on them. Personally, I missed the
webinar due to earlier commitments but instead opted to give feedback in
written and audio form. This ended up being far hardest thing we’ve done on
this OAMK course so far and also caused a lot of discussion and reflection in
our first group planning session for the next webinar. We all agreed that this
is an area of teaching where cultural differences can play a big role, as well
as the experience of the teacher.
Goals and intended outcomes of
assessment and feedback
Our team had a specific question to tackle, as
always. This time it was to discuss the goals and intended outcomes of
assessment and feedback. In our planning session we agreed that while the goals
were pretty straightforward, the “beef” in the topic was how to reach those
goals.
To lead the students into the topic, we had
decided to share a video clip from a film Whiplash. The film follows the ambitious music
student and jazz drummer Andrew Neiman (Teller),
who is pushed to his limit by his abusive instructor. Video included some fairly
violent aspects so we did have a concern whether it would be suitable to all.
So, instead of showing the film in teams, we copied the video link to chat and let
the students themselves decide whether to watch it. This way they also had the
chance of stopping it at any time.
As expected, the video raised some discussion
whether the abusive instructor was actually assessing, giving feedback of just
scaring the poor student. (Later on, after the actual teaching session, one of
the students remarked, that in the art world that kind of “teaching/guiding”
can be normal and in her case had lead into her stopping playing one of her
instruments.)
Anyway, video brought us nicely into the topic in question:
What are the goals of assessment?
According to Hyppönen & Linden,
assessment aims at developing the students’ skills. It is also aims at
correcting wrong impressions but, possibly most importantly, challenges
students to a deeper approach to learning. They also argue that assessment is
essential when the aim is to help the students achieve the set outcomes. In
same line, Trotter sees three levels for the purpose of assessment: giving
feedback, motivating and supporting students’ learning.
Planning assessment
According to Strakova, when choosing
your preferred method of assessment, you should consider the following. Is your
assessment?
- valid
- reliable
- practical
- no
negative backwash
By validity we mean that the test tests what it is intended to test. We cannot test
everything in one test and this is why we should select those things which
could give us the feedback on how well the student has mastered certain
aspects. (Strakova)
Reliability of
the test means that the test results that we get from the students would be
nearly the same if the students were given the same test again in the same
conditions.
for example we should use a variety of testing
tasks with which students should be familiar, instructions should be clear,
there should be enough time for the test, the same conditions, etc. (Strakova)
Practicality depends on student
numbers and course contents/learning outcomes. Obviously you would not s essay
answers on a mooc course but something else more suitable for large number of
learners.
Backwash effect is the influence that the test has
on the teaching itself. It is rather frequent that teaching becomes
subordinated to the test and the teachers teach to the test and not the
syllabus or the aims of the course. (Strakova)
Learning outcomes
guide also the assessment
When planning assessment, learning
outcomes of the course should always guide, just like when we plan the course
content or student activities we practised in the first webinar when talking
about pedagogical scripting. You can think the following questions (according
to Strakova):
·
What do I
want my students to learn by the end of the course?
·
What skill
should they achieve?
·
What should
they be able to do or demonstrate at the end of the course?
And at the same
time you need to consider the following:
- How
will they be able to prove their achievements?
- Which
tasks or activities will enable them to demonstrate these achievements?
- How can
I balance the assessment tasks in order to get a complex ......of the
student´s skills and knowledge?
And hopefully through this exercise you get a solution to your question: What assessment methods do I need to use in order to get the desired proofs of the learning outcomes?
Assessment in real life situation
Consider a class of 400 first year international business students. (modified example from Biggs). Let me ask you a question: What format will you use to assess your class?
1. An individual research project (maximum 5000 words).
2. A
multiple-choice test.
3. A 2000 word
assignment during the term, and a final three-hour examination.
4. A
contextualized problem-based portfolio.
You might reply:
Not 1, as it takes too long to mark; same for 3.
No 4 – perhaps hopelessly
unrealistic?
Should it be 2?
Well, you could be right, but
the question is unanswerable as it stands. A crucial
consideration has been omitted: what are your objectives? The ‘best’
assessment method is the one that best realizes your objectives.
Student activity
We gave students a practical task from a real-life course:
Consider that you as a new teacher get
to teach English at Work (3 study credits) course for a class of 40 finnish
language business students. Curriculum gives you Course contents and learning
outcomes but you need to decide how to assess these students?
Course contents include
- retrieval of information
- job-search skills
- company operations
- business vocabulary
- working-life spoken communication
- business presentations
- workplace emails
(emphasis on the last 4)
Learning outcomes of the course
The student
- is able to perform in English in working-life
communication and interaction situations related to their own professional
field
What kind of assessment would serve these learning
outcomes? Students’ suggestions below:
Picture one: What mind of assessment would serve the learning outcomes on English at work 1 -course? Students' suggestions from padlet activity.
Following the exercise, students were told how this real-life
course is currently assessed:
40% Spoken tasks (video presentation + elevator
pitch)
40% Written tasks (email + report)
20 % Course participation and class assignment
In this course the teacher uses continuous assessment. It differs from the form of exams
since the assessment is spread throughout the course and the students receive
their results partially. The reason why continuous assessment is meaningful for
the student is that it is usually spread over more than one skill or knowledge
area. Many courses typically include into the continuous assessment a variety
of tasks, e.g. producing an essay, presentations of selected topics,
presentation of a portfolio with selected tasks, chairing a discussion, etc. it
means not only knowledge-based tasks but also tasks with such outputs that
students can prepare in stress-free environment, in a sufficient amount of time
and present them to the teacher. (Strakova)
Assessment outside the classroom
Giving feedback is not only concerning educational
world but also business world. Mihnea Moldoveanu from Harvard Business Publishing recently published an
article by University of Toronto professor Mihnea Moldoveanu, suggesting that it is necessary to teach executive some soft skills in
order for them to be able to give feedback. This certainly also resonates here
in Finland where most of the industry is engineer-lead. In a world where
companies are competing over staff, good leadership with ability to enter
dialogue with its employees is the winning formula. This also has impact in
vocational training as in increasing amount students are studying “at work” and
lots of the feedback might come from people who are not teachers and as such
might not be skilled for giving feedback at all.
Moldoveanu detailed some good points that a good
feedback should have eg. timeliness, being specific, actionable and
trustworthy.
But it is equally important to focus on how feedback
is delivered: According to Moldoveanu feedback should be developmental in order to help the learner
improve their performance. It should have sequences of feedback for the learner
to refine their skills and finally, feedback should be interactive to be
effective.
What makes assessment so hard?
There are various reasons why assessment is so hard
but one of the things that certainly created a lots of discussion in our group
is:
How to make student understand the feedback so that it
motivates him and supports his learning. We all agreed that giving verbal feedback
face-to-face might be the most effective way to give feedback but this is very
seldom practical. So, plenty of food for thought for the teacher-trainees.
Post-webinar thoughts
I feel that we had covered the given topic well. Our
starting video and also the practical task activated and motivated students to
discuss and participate. We made a conscious effort not to add too many apps into
the teaching session but rather wanted to run the session in discussing manner.
I feel this was the right choice.
Other learning sessions
Group 1: How do the assessment methods
reflect the view of learning and the learning theory behind them? We had already
familiarized ourselves with different learning theories in the past webinar’s so
it was refreshing that Group 1 had decided not to offer us an over-long slideshow on the topic.
Rather we discussed a different theory and a suitable assessment in turn and this
certainly in our group seemed to work really well. We had a very open
discussion on how certain theories might not suit all types of learning
outcomes and assessments alike.
Group 2: What
are the most common assessment methods, how do they work and differ
from each other? During the teaching session, we started
with discussion on what effects assessment has on students’ learning and then
moved on to different type of assessment methods. Here I would have perhaps
chosen just a few methods and concentrated on those and the differences, rather
than a list of 30 methods. Student activity was to plan what type of assessments
and methods could be used on a Horse Care and Management qualification pre-test.
Personally, I found this quite difficult exercise, as the objective of the
assessment was a little vague and the area of the vocational training in
question being far from my own field of expertise didn’t help.
Group 3: What are the amendments and
guidelines regulating, governing and providing the framework for assessment in
vocational and higher education? Illustrate your teaching session of this topic
with real or imaginary examples from actual assessment cases. Group 3 had given us a pretask where
we were asked the different types of assessment methods we were already
familiar with. The actual teaching session started with a historical look into
the Finnish education system. Looking back this section could have been
provided to students as a pretask reading, leaving the teachers time to cover other
areas in more detail. The actual assessment cases by Radu and Jin were
excellent as gave us students a real peek into the real world of assessment. The
legal framework for assessment was a tough one to cover but perhaps trying to
find just the most important things, like assessment of competence based
learning.
Sources:
John Biggs: Teaching for Quality Learning at
University: II. Practice
Hyppönen&Linden: Handbook for
Teachers
Mihnea Moldoveanu: Helping executive learn the unteachable
Zuzana Strakova: Assessment in higher
education
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