Languages, ICT, education

Assessment today is simply to give grades, for students don't study to learn, they study to earn their grade. What is in a number? How can something as complex as learning be reduced to a single figure? Why doesn't assessment provide more to the learner than a grade? Because it was established at a time when knowledge was the main currency for education, and where employers demanded knowledgeable workers. That has chaned now.

When we make learning visible, teachers and students are better able to assess their impact.These six strategies will get you started.

The open nature of MOOCs affects the design of its resources, its activities, and of course the interactions among participants. As far as the design of the course is concerned, the spread of online tools opens up a universe of possibilities …

Testing, especially any sort of standardized testing tends to get a bad rap. Teachers complain that they spend too much time teaching to a test.

It's an obvious myth that students think homework is for their benefit. With that attitude, a student may think, "It doesn't matter how I get the homework done, just as long as it is done before the teacher checks it. Right?" This is why on the day the homework is due a group of students can typically be seen frantically huddled over the "smart girl" copying her answers. ...

Yesterday, Justin Tarte shared a thought about grading that’s indicative of a growing dissatisfaction with grading in education. So let’s take a look at what we’re doing, and how we’re doing it, shall we?

Norman Webb's Depth of Knowledge Levels is a system that categorizes tasks according to the complexity of thinking required to successfully complete them.

If we hope to construct enduring understanding in our students, it's critical that, now more than ever, we know their strengths and interests. By incorporating students' strengths and weakness into authentic learning experiences from the beginning of each unit, while at the same time including opportunities for feedback, metacognition and revision, we promote a variety of cognitive and emotional benefits that can lead to academic success.

Student: ‘Teacher, am I going to pass this course?’ Me: ‘What do you think? Do you have any thoughts about your performance so far?’ This is a conversation I’ve had many hundreds of times down the ...

Lado (1961) succinctly summarises validity in this way: “Does a test measure what it is supposed to measure? If it does, it is valid.” Six years earlier Cronbach and Meehl had introduced the ‘trini...

Our lives are increasingly data rich. The demands for educational measurement continue to grow—from the epics of students’ high-stakes testing, the politics of teacher measurement (and pay), higher education’s quest towards competency-based education, and professional learning’s venturing into the world of micro-credentials and new-age certificates. Our current measurement tools are at best mediocre for the learner, and downright abysmal for hiring managers. Given the accelerating change in the way people learn, the world is ripe for a stronger way to signal learning and skills aptitude. ...

How can teachers prove that deep, rich learning is occurring through making? How do we justify a grade to students and parents alike, especially to the student who "just isn’t good at art"? By crafting a three-part rubric that assesses process, understanding, and product, teachers can rest assured that they are covering all the bases.

A collection of rubrics for assessing portfolios, cooperative learning, research process/ report, PowerPoint, oral presentation, web page, blog, wiki, and other social media projects.

Formative assessments are simply little gauges or indicators of how students are progressing towards a learning goal. It could be anything from a simple conversation to something like a clickers or response via a website. It is the formative assessments throughout learning that give us the indication we are headed down the right path with our learning or whether we should take a right turn to get back on track. The use of the formative assessments help teachers understand where their students are and, more importantly, where their teaching is.

Students at Normal Park Museum Magnet School create various types of museum-style exhibits to demonstrate their understanding of academic topics.

#Edchat 05 – 24 – 2011 – 18:00 CET 12 PM EST A summary of the chat on Porfolio assessment (#Edchat 05 – 24 – 2011)