Monday, December 06, 2010

Transforming assessment

Margot McNeil et al. from Macquarie Uni

Sorts of things used to support assessment - easy to construct a list, Wikis, online quizes.

Interesting point - ususally knowledge and comprehension, but not developing and assessing judgements, students gap in their own learning, etc. In other words we find it hard to assess the higher order skills, metacognitive abilities since it is easier to assess definitions and application of procedures to well structured problems (answer 42, LOL).

Use of forums for formative assessment more than summative in the study. More balanced for portfolios, virutal worlds, blogs and wikis. Quizes used more for summative than formative.

Key is alignment of learning outcomes with the activities and assessment. Simply put, you get answers to the sorts of questions you ask - if you ask yes/no etc then you won't get higher learning. Not many examples, pointers given in talk though.... Left as an exercise to the reader. Need good examples/inspirations of higher order outcomes.

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