Digital assignments: How shall we grade them? A couple of years ago, I took the decision to encourage students to submit their assignments in forms other than the traditional, paper based essay. It was about time. Should we persist in assessing students in modes of communication they may never use in the real world? Clearly, there are several questions to contemplate here. The first question is how do you grade these assignments, if they are not presented in traditional essay mode? The second question is how can you ensure that students put the equivalent cognitive effort into say, a video, as they would into a 4000 word assignment? Whatever you decide to do, it will be imperative that you ensure all assessment criteria are applied equally across all assignments, no matter what wrapper they are presented in. There are further, procedural and administrative issues that each institution will need to deal with. I'm certain this is not complete. Photo from Wikimedia Commons Digital assignments: How shall we grade them?
How Competency-Based Learning Actually Works A report from The National Center for Education Statistics found that 38% of those enrolled in higher education are over the age of 25 and one-fourth are over the age of 30. The share of all students who are over age 25 is projected to increase another twenty-three percent by 20191. These findings demonstrate a significant shift in the traditional higher education student. While many developments, such as MOOCs, Open Educational Resources, flipped classroom models and accelerated three-year degree programs have entered the landscape, another great option for variety in learning is Competency-Based Learning (CBL). CBL is designed to provide students with a personalized online education that they can complete at their own pace and that takes advantage of competence learned through experience. As defined by the U.S. History Adoption Delaware County Community College (Pennsylvania) incorporates competency frameworks within traditional course-based programs. Benefits Altering Higher Education
Dylan Wiliam Professional development Finally! The revised Embedding formative assessment pack for schools and colleges to run their own two-year professional development programme on formative assessment is now available worldwide. In Europe, this can be ordered through SSAT, in Australasia through Hawker-Brownlow, and in North America from Learning Sciences International. Further details of the pack are here. Also, a series of high-quality video presentations by Dylan Wiliam, with a total running time of over two and a half hours, is now available world-wide.
Assessment in open spaces Photo: Tay Railway Bridge (Dundee) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Tim Haynes “We have to build our half of the bridge, no matter who or where we happen to be.” – Colm McCann Summary: Learning and pedagogical relationships are transformed when we engage with students in open online spaces or networked publics. These can become ‘third spaces’ of learning, beyond the binary of informal and formal learning. Once a closed classroom (physical or online) becomes open to the world, assessment options multiply, with many more opportunities for student choice, voice and creativity, and of course, feedback. [Slides] [Audio interview] xx This post summarises my talk at the eAssessment Scotland 2013 conference, “Assessment in Open Spaces”. The eAssessment Scotland conference is a completely free, 2-week event which is open, distributed and accessible. In this context, I examined three spaces in which networked educators meet networked students, and explored the affordances of these different spaces. Like this:
What is Authentic Assessment? What is Authentic Assessment? Definitions What Does Authentic Assessment Look Like? How is Authentic Assessment Similar to/Different from Traditional Assessment? Alternative Names for Authentic Assessment A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills -- Jon Mueller "...Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field." -- Grant Wiggins -- (Wiggins, 1993, p. 229). An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated. Examples from teachers in my Authentic Assessment course 1. In the TA model, the curriculum drives assessment. 1.
Going Paperless in Your Classroom and Saving to the Cloud with Dropbox Annotate Your PDFs with GoodNotes and Save Them to Dropbox As more and more classrooms, schools and districts are going with one-to-one device programs, I am often left shedding tears of sadness when I learn that the devices are used only to complement the learning that is already happening during a lesson. I am hearing about more and more educational technology leaders in secondary schools move towards one-to-one Chromebook programs rather than iPad programs, likely to avoid this very issue. At first glance, Chromebooks and other laptop options appear to provide more options for deeper integration during instructional time, while iPads seem to provide limited options for use throughout the entire school day. Make iPad Your #1 Learning Device in All Classes Why Does Using Technology Mean Typing on a Keyboard? Annotating PDF Files and Saving to the Cloud Opening a PDF File in GoodNotes Step 1 – Open the PDF File in Safari Open the link where your PDF file exists on the web. Annotate away!
Roger Tilles warns of 'dangerous' overemphasis on education testing Originally published: October 2, 2013 9:42 PM Updated: October 2, 2013 10:23 PM By JOHN HILDEBRAND john.hildebrand@newsday.com State Regent Roger Tilles leads a public Q & A at the Port Washington Library. (Oct. 2, 2013) (Credit: Barry Sloan) One of the region's top education policymakers warned a Port Washington gathering Wednesday night that what he termed a "dangerous" overemphasis on testing threatened to undermine a statewide movement toward high-quality Common Core academic standards. The speaker, Roger Tilles of Great Neck, who represents Long Island on the state's Board of Regents, said he supported Common Core, like most educators, because "it makes kids think." Tilles said, however, that Core standards were becoming confused with new tests that were rushed into place in April, and were being used to rate students' achievement and teachers' job performance. "I really don't want to see the Common Core lost, and I hear that," Tilles said. State Education Commissioner John B.
ClassBadges Now Offering Free Custom Gamification Badges We’ve been watching ClassBadges evolve over the past several months. Way back in October , we wrote about the site that lets you create badges for your students as you set out on your quest to gamify your classroom. Whatever your goal is (improve engagement, increase activity, incentivize learning, etc.) – ClassBadges looked like one of the best options. As of today, they now have custom gamification badges available. So if you’re halfway decent at graphic design, this is a great bit of news for you. In fact, the custom badges feature could be a fun way to get your students involved in actually deciding and creating the badges in the first place. See Also: The 50 Best Videos For Teachers Interested In Gamification It took me a couple weeks to finally get my invitation to ClassBadges so it may take you a similarly long time. After logging into ClassBadges (it may take awhile to get confirmation), create a course.
Quick Formative Assessment of Student Writing Since reading Bill Ferriter's post on whether or not true formative assessment is possible, I've been wondering how I could make my own formative assessments more efficient. This post features a screencast of me looking at student work for the purposes of formative assessment. Formative assessment is continuous assessment. In the context of writing workshop, formative assessment occurs during mini-lessons when I ask students to do a small task and I circulate to watch what students are writing. One common misconception of formative assessment is that teachers need to collect and "grade" all work multiple times. Below are some tricks to make formative assessments go more quickly. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. While I generally do it without paper, the process can be easily adapted to paper-based settings. It took me around 8 minutes to look at three student papers. "Brag" about the description I'm seeing in student work. What tricks do you have for efficient management of formative assessments?
Letters: Modern language exam grades translate into poor results It is well-known that the UK is losing out culturally and economically because of inadequate foreign-language skills among English native speakers. This problem has been significantly exacerbated by the fact that pupils choosing modern languages have not been rewarded adequately for excellent performance. Ofqual has acknowledged in its corporate plan 2013-16 that "relatively few A* grades are awarded in modern foreign languages when compared with other subjects with a high proportion of A grades". This finding confirms evidence by schoolteacher associations that has repeatedly been presented to Ofqual and the exam boards since introduction of the A* grade at A-level in June 2010. The disadvantaging of modern languages candidates in school examinations has been blighting the subject at all levels, and will continue to do so until the unfair grading is addressed effectively.
All In Learning » Tutorials *Key Concept: The Relationship Between ASSIST and PLUS Your primary ALL In Learning tool is PLUS, which you access using a web browser on your computer or tablet. ASSIST is the freely available iOS app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Once you’ve entered your PLUS user name and password in ASSIST, your iOS device becomes a special ALL In Learning platform, with quick, simple, powerful features that make the most of your device’s mobility, convenience, and charming interface and hardware. How to Install ASSIST on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch To install ASSIST on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, search for “ASSIST” in the App Store, and install the ALL In Learning ASSIST app. How to Connect ASSIST to PLUS On your iOS device, open ASSIST by tapping on it.Tap “Settings.”Tap the “Email Address” field and enter your PLUS username.Tap in the “Password” field and enter your PLUS password.Tap “Done.” Watch the step-by-step video: Connect ASSIST to PLUS in ASSIST>>
Blogging for Writing Instruction is Nothing short of Amazing! | Map without Borders Having read the dreaded “I am going to tell you about” 5-paragraph essay until my eyes glaze over and I fall into a comatose state, I have spent years scouring the earth for engaging approaches to writing. My quest has taken me to the promising lands of writing clubs, writer’s notebooks, and writer’s workshops, Four-square, and Six Traits, mystery bags, photo prompts, guided imagery, peer review, passed around team writing, speed writing, personal journals, and Morning Pages. Some were more engaging than others, but nothing too impressive…until….blogging. So, why is blogging so cool? Here we go! An authentic audience.Revising! And I saved the best for last. That miracle was worth the whole ride itself, but to see the overall transformation of a process that I used to dread and now look forward to with great anticipation….that is amazing. I use kidblog.org. Like this: Like Loading...
Graduate School of Education | Publications Literature review Oldfield, A, Broadfoot, P., Sutherland, R. & Timmis , S. (2012) Assessment in a digital age: a research review. Discussion papers Series authors Patricia Broadfoot, Sue Timmis, Sarah Payton, Alison Oldfield, Rosamund Sutherland Other publications Patricia Broadfoot, Alison Oldfield, Rosamund Sutherland and Sue Timmis (in press, 2013) Seeds of Change: the potential of the digital revolution to promote enabling assessment in Wyatt-Smith, C and Klenowski, V (eds) The enabling power of assessment. Conference contributions Broadfoot, P (2012) Can Digital Technologies Transform Educational Assessment? Timmis, S, Oldfield, A, Broadfoot, P & Sutherland, R. (2012) Where is the cutting edge of research in e-Assessment? Timmis, S & Draper, S (2012) Assessment Reform, Innovative Technology, Improving Formative Assessment and Feedback: Are They at Odds with Each Other?
[rd] Measuring learning growth in a world of universal education | Research Developments | ACER International Image © Shutterstock/Tashatuvango ACER is leading the development of new ‘learning metrics’ – tools for measuring learning growth – as Ross Turner explains. Staff at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Centre for Global Education Monitoring (GEM), in 2013 identified the need to build measurement tools to monitor learning growth that could be used across different year levels and in different national contexts. One of those projects, under ACER’s Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth program, involved the development of an assessment program in Afghanistan at the Grade 6 level, which is now being extended to Grade 3 and later possibly to Grade 9. With those post-2015 development goals soon to be adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, it is evident that the GEM approach to measuring learning progress is a timely development. Learning metrics Building the learning metrics is progressing in three phases. What does a learning metric look like?