Assessment, the more, the merrier

Learning diary on October 13.

More.

That is the keyword that I want to use to summarize the learning process of the third jigsaw teaching session. Assessment has always been a fascinating topic for me - I have written both my bachelor's degree thesis and master's degree thesis on this topic. I felt like there is so much to learn about assessment that it felt like there is never enough of learning of this topic. The more I learn, the more I discover.

Be focused.

The competence that our group taught in this session is How do the assessment methods reflect the view of learning and the learning theory behind them? I think this question is very well constructed and it delivered a very clear message of what the learning goals would be. From our first preparatory experience, we learned that setting up learning goals can make lesson planning more oriented and teamwork more easily organized. So we keep what we have been working well and make improvements based on feedback that we received from the assessment groups. Our group usually set no more than 3 goals for the 45-minute lesson, and we carefully chose the key action words from Bloom's taxonomy action words (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) to describe what learners are expected to be able to DO after the lesson. In this lesson, the learning goals were

• Distinguish the four learning theories: behaviorist, cognitive, constructivist, and sociocultural theory of learning 

• Explain how assessment methods reflect certain learning theory

Be structured.

Due to the time limit and the delivery mode being online, we tried to deal with the core competence, pacing our teaching process to a 5-10-25-5 mode, which means that we reserve 5 minutes both to the beginning and the end of the lesson, 10 minutes to tackle some key concepts and the 25 minutes to the application of knowledge and skills. The first 5 minutes are used for introducing the topic and the goals of the lesson. The 10 minutes following is a key phase for setting up a foundation for the knowledge and skills application stage because we need to address those key skills and knowledge beforehand as a way to ensure that learners have reached to at least the basic understanding level, which will be needed to proceed to the application phase. Then the 25 minutes will be more task-oriented. They can be case studies, text analysis, debate, and discussion. In this stage, learners are required to apply the key knowledge and skills to co-construct the learning environments and to promote thinking and thinking.  In the end, we will conclude and session and collect feedback from the participants. 

Be flexible.

For this lesson, we spent 10 minutes reviewing the four learning theories, starting with an online quiz containing 10 multiple-choice questions

https://www.flexiquiz.com/SC/N/e4bc4d78-cf7a-4462-ac1e-dcf3754cc6f4. 

The quiz was timed, and after the participants submit their answers, the correct answers will be presented right away. Right after that, we took a look at the questions together and reviewed all four learning theories. This step is important because the participants will need the knowledge to refer to when they proceed to the case analysis task.

The above-mentioned model may sound a bit rigid, but we tend to be flexible in real teaching. The 10-minute session usually does not take only 10 minutes, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, depending on the flow of the lesson. If the discussion goes on well or there are questions coming up from the participants, more time will be spent on answering students' questions. Like in this lesson, students were still a bit confused by the cognitive and constructivist theory of learning, so as a teacher, I spent more time explaining the difference between these two learning theories.

Be action-oriented.

After the first lesson, one of the feedback that we got from the assessment group was that our presentation slides could be made a bit more visually attractive. In the beginning, we tended to use the auto-design function of Microsoft Powerpoint, so the templates are very limited. Our presentations were quite boring, while other groups were using attractive templates or presentation tools like Prezi. Personally, I do not like Prezi, because it takes too much time to set up the slides, but it is mainly for visual purposes, while an improvement on the traditional slides can have quite similar effects and yet be more time-saving.

It is a headache for me to make the slides more visually attractive. Templates from Microsoft Powerpoints are quite limited. And it takes too much time to build one on our own. I learned from my teammate that there are many beautiful slides from a platform called slidesgo. I was amazed by the template stock that it presents. More amazingly, it is free for personal use. So we took action to look for good platforms to facilitate our lesson planning and made real improvements in the visual design of the slides, even though they are just from templates.

Presentation for the lesson on Sep. 22

Presentation for the lesson on Sep. 28

   

Presentation for the lesson on Oct. 13

   

(Isn´t the third presentation much more tempting?)

Be innovative.

A lot would agree that online teaching makes it difficult for interaction to happen. I do agree that the lack of physical interaction does lower the efficiency of teaching and learning in some way, but the core question here is not about complaining about something that we could not do many changes to, but actively think of solutions. One of my teammates said that she was teaching when the corona pandemic first struck and teachers had to teach online. That was the time when she was kind of forced to be tech-innovative. I learned about the tool Pear Deck from her and my lesson has proved that it is one powerful interactive online teaching tool. Teachers can create different kinds of interactive activities using this tool, which makes the learning process more smooth and interesting. All the participants in my teaching group love the tool. 

For example, when presenting a link, the teacher does not have to copy-paste the link to the chatbox, but the student can just click on the link on their own screen. 

Case study (James, 2006)

The teacher can also design interactive activity as shown below. With the Pear Deck tool, students can drag the blocks on the right to match with the learning theories on the left. And the teachers can see on the screen the process and the results of the students´ performance and give feedback instantly. 

In the beginning, I was a bit worried about the internet and the stability of the platform. There were cases where the platform could crash down. It happened to my teammate. I prepared that if the internet or the platform would be unstable, then I would use just the presentation slides and apply the traditional teaching methods to ensure the flow of the lesson. But luckily, it went perfectly and the participants and I were able to enjoy the fun this powerful interactive tool had brought us. Like what I have reflected earlier on my blog, the jigsaw lessons have provided us with precious opportunities to try out new things. Even if we would have made mistakes, it would have still been important for us as teachers, because we know what can work well and what can be risky.  

Be sustainable. 

This time, I applied a short questionnaire at the end of my lesson to collect some feedback. In the previous lessons, I usually just asked for oral feedback from participants, collecting information that is mainly about participants’ feedback on how the lesson has gone and what could be improved. But this time, I asked students to do a little bit of self-assessment to see how well the learning goals have been achieved. In real-life teaching, this could inform the teacher whether he or she should explain the topic more or they can move on to the next topic. The participants were very pleased with this small self-assessment task because it reminded them again what were the main focuses of the lesson.

Reflection on others´ teachings 

------------------------Topic 1------------------------

What are the goals and intended outcomes of assessment and feedback in vocational education / higher education? 

I think the goals of the lesson were made clear, even though there were too many of them that we did not have time to go through all the goals. We tried to define what assessment is about, what assessment methods there are and why we need assessment.

I like such descriptions of assessment as assessment is to see if learning is actually happening and how the learning process is going. There are many different ways to categorize the assessment methods, for example, assessment in learning, assessment for learning and assessment as learning; formative assessment and summative assessment. For me, assessment is an umbrella term. Evaluation and feedback, which are related to assessment, are part of the assessment practices.

Towards the end of the lesson, we were asked to choose one of the three articles to read and tell about one thing that has impressed us. I was reading Getting Started with Assessment for Learning. I was impressed by this saying Assessment increases independence. I have never thought of assessment in this way, but when I think more about it, it indeed will help learners to be more aware of their own studies. And if the assessment outcomes are used properly by the teachers to inform future teaching and learning, assessment can be empowering the future as well.

------------------------Topic 2------------------------

What is the difference between assessing competence and assessing the learning process? What kind of feedback / assessment methods can be used? 

I think the teacher can use very precise words to explain the key concerns of assessment, which are reliability, validity, flexibility and fairness. Readability is about the consistency of different assessment activities. Validity is about what a certain assessment activity claims. Flexibility is concerned with the different media on which the outcomes are based on. The fairness aspect of assessment prompts the teachers to take into consideration the diverse and individual needs of students. 

The teacher also shared his personal experience about how the selection of assessment methods have been changing over time. For me, I like listening to stories, because it can bring some lively experiences into the learning process, which makes it more attachable to. The teacher said that he was teaching in a high school in Hongkong for ten years. The assessment methods that he had been using were very different from what the teachers that came to the school 10 years later had been using. There has been a change in the selection of assessment. Some are regarded outdated and some are regarded as now more pedagogically justified. 

We did this assessment methods categorization activity in the teaching session: direct assessment and indirect assessment. We had an interesting discussion. With different definitions, one assessment method can be categorized into either direct assessment or indirect assessment.

I think the lesson addressed some key aspects of the assessment, but due to time limitations, it failed to address the key competence of the lesson:  what is the difference between assessing competence and assessing the learning process. We only had time to talk a little bit about competence-based assessment, which leans more towards collecting evidence and establishing conclusions on the characteristics and scope of a learner's progress, and this progress is closely related to professional development. 

------------------------Topic 4------------------------

What are the most common assessment methods, how do they work and differ from each other? 

The teacher in our teaching group was absent, so I changed to room 3 to learn about this topic. I like that the teacher used an inductive teaching method. Instead of telling us what are summative assessment methods, formative assessment methods, and diagnostic assessment methods at the beginning, we learned about those methods at the very end of the lesson. Before that, we looked at some examples. Some of them were very closely related to our own learning experience, for example making a personal study plan. All of us could relate to that painful experience but yet it is connected to the topic that we are studying in this lesson.

References: 

Anderson,    L.    W.,    &    Krathwohl,    D.    R.    (2001).    A    taxonomy    for    learning,    teaching,    and    assessing,    Abridged    Edition.    Boston,    MA:    Allyn    and    Bacon. 

James, M. (2006). Assessment, teaching and theories of learning. In Assessment and Learning (pp. 47-60). London: Sage.​

10 things you need to know about competency-based assessment:

https://www.creatrixcampus.com/blog/10-things-you-need-know-about-competency-based-assessments

Getting started with assessment for learning: 

https://cambridge-community.org.uk/professional-development/gswafl/index.html 

Formative VS. Summative VS. Diagnostic Assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI-YgK-l4Sg