Students are entitled to a more educative and user-friendly assessment system. They deserve far more feedback -- and opportunities to use it -- as part of the local assessment process.

Our job is to teach to the standards, not the test.

Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment

The point of assessment in education is to advance learning, not to merely audit absorption of facts.

1Engaging Adults Learners with Technology

A Teacher’s Resource For A Comprehensive Assessment System

an institutional rather than a user focus

for many students owning their own domain and blog remains a better route to establishing a lifelong digital identity

Can explain concepts, principles, and processes by putting it their own words, teaching it to others, justifying their answers, and showing their reasoning.• Can interpret by making sense of data, text, and experience through images, analogies, stories, and models.• Can apply by effectively using and adapting what they know in new and complex contexts.• Demonstrate perspective by seeing the big picture and recognizing differ-ent points of view.• Display empathy by perceiving sensitively and walking in someone else’s shoes.• Have self-knowledge by showing meta-cognitive awareness, using productive habits of mind, and reflect-ing on the meaning of the learning and experience.

"The idea is bananas, as far as I'm concerned," says Kelly Henderson, an English teacher at Newton South High School just outside Boston. "An art form, a form of expression being evaluated by an algorithm is patently ridiculous."

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The aim is to demonstrate the distance travelled on their journey in the form of tangible, trackable learning outcomes and applications.

compare where their engagement levels stand against the rest of the class.

self-regulating effect

institutionally controlled assessment and collection of data

At the very least, the tool should allow for robust formative assessment, and should be capable of giving timely, helpful feedback to learners.

The distinction between assessment and surveillance seems really blurry to me.

key skills they then can apply to other situations beyond this specific course or assessment

By giving student data to the students themselves, and encouraging active reflection on the relationship between behavior and outcomes, colleges and universities can encourage students to take active responsibility for their education in a way that not only affects their chances of academic success, but also cultivates the kind of mindset that will increase their chances of success in life and career after graduation.

on-track assessments to develop targeted interventions

we must routinely and explicitly give them structured practice opportunities to critically examine their own thinking.

University-wide 33–39% of faculty said that fewer than half of their undergraduates meet their expectations

TPS Reflective Exercises

this kind of assessmen

and reflect on its purposes — individually and as a class. 

Drier’s final grades are based on students’ written self-assessments, which, in turn, are based on their review of items in their portfolios. 

Extrinsic motivation, which includes a desire to get better grades, is not only different from, but often undermines, intrinsic motivation, a desire to learn for its own sake (Kohn 1999a). 

No newspaper, no politician, no parent or school administrator should ever assume that a test score is a valid and meaningful indicator without looking carefully at the questions on that test to ascertain that they’re designed to measure something of importance and that they do so effectively.

When we reduce students to numbers and grades, they and we focus on test-taking skills and grade requirements rather than on learning

There is certainly value in assessing the quality of learning and teaching, but that doesn’t mean it’s always necessary, or even possible, to measurethose things — that is, to turn them into numbers.  Indeed, “measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning”

How has learning already been changed by the tracking we already do?

ensure that students feel more thoroughly policed

testing industry programming the child

that learning is defined by “student achievement,”

assess the stuff that’s easy to measure

students were being made to take them several times a year, including “benchmark” tests to prepare them for the other tests.

Afurtherbarriertotheuseofformativefeedbackmaybethatsomestudentsincreasinglyfailtounderstandthetaken-for-grantedacademicdiscourseswhichunderpinassessmentcriteriaandthelanguageoffeedback(Hounsell,1987).AccordingtoEntwistle(1984,p.1),‘effectivecommunicationdependsonsharedassumptions,denitions,andunderstanding’.ButastudyatLancasterUniversityfoundthat50%ofthethird-yearstudentsinoneacademicdepartmentwereunclearwhattheassessmentcriteriawere(Baldwin,1993,citedinBrown&Knight,1994).Asoneofourstudentsnoted:‘Ihaven’tgotacluewhatI’massessedon’

Assessment and Classroom Learning

The process of peer review ensures the inviola bility of these codes and, in this way, discourages innovative work. What does not conform to the code is deemed unacceptable.

The New Politics of Educational Data

Ranty Blog Post about Big Data, Learning Analytics, & Higher Ed

I told them you could work 60 hours a week, never take a holiday or weekend off, have internationally regarded publications – lots of them, write textbooks, be a great teacher, and managers will still ask for more. And more. I told them you are measured only by what you have not managed to achieve, not what you have achieved, never mind how valuable or prestigious.

One potential use: get-ting students to create a multilayered re-cord of their thinking while attempting to solve math problems.

Zoomerang

While the display is appealing and easy to read, it is not customizable

Polldaddy for iOS was a great option for this type of assessment. The layout and design are optimized for the iPad’s screen, and survey results are loaded offline. Be-cause an Internet connection is not required to administer a survey, the researcher has more flexibility in location of survey administration.

Google Forms

A two-question survey was designed to pilot the iPadas a survey delivery device in GSU Library. The first survey question was ―Why did you come to the library today? Please choose the primary reason.‖ Ten response options were listed in alphabetical order, and survey takers were allowed to select one option. The tenth response option was ―other,‖ with a text field in which survey takers could enter their own explanations. This question was included because the library is extremely busy, with an average daily door count of 10,000 during a typical semester. The door count data show heavy use of the building, but the library has little means of finding out what visitors do while they are in the buildings. The second survey question was ―What is your major?,‖ which was an open-text field.

Bhaskaran (2010) recently weighed in on the benefits of using iPads for survey re-search, but little has been written about the use of tablet computers as mobile assess-ment devices. What literature does exist primarily relates to the healthcare professions.

Over the past few years, the market research literature has reflected a concern about the quality of face-to-face market research as compared to online surveys and polls. Manfreda, Bosnjak, Berzelak, Haas, and Vehovar (2008) analyzed other studies that compared response rates from Web-based surveys to response rates of at least one other survey delivery method. Web survey responses were, on average, eleven percent lower than the other methods investigated. In their study of face-to-face survey responses as compared to online survey responses, Heerwegh and Looseveldt (2008) concluded that responses to Web surveys were of poorer quality and, overall, less suffi-cient than responses to surveys conducted face-to-face.

it is not art itself that people are turning from. People are turning away “from the traditional delivery mechanisms” (Cohen, 2013)

the personal, social, and emotional transformations that adolescents and adults who are at risk experience as they develop resilience and shift from disengagement to engagement, and/or academic failure to success in schools.

prior learning assessments

I have used the bibliographies to conduct my own research in the area of cataloging assessment, and the social justice bibliography has helped me with a project I’m working on to examine video classification practices.

there is a powerful impact on growth and self awareness when students can see their own development in speaking, in writing, in thinking and problem solving.

Using explicit criteria, the student develops the ability to look at her own work and determine the strengths and weaknesses evident in a particular performance or across a set of performances. She begins to set goals to address the areas she needs to develop and to deepen her areas of strength.

“Making creates evidence of learning.” The thing you make—whether it be a robot, rocket, or blinking LED—is evidence that you did something, and there is also an entire process behind making that can be talked about and shared with others. How did you make it? Why? Where did you get the parts? Making is not just about explaining the technical process; it’s also about the communication about what you’ve done.

"What connections can I make between what I'm learning in one class with what rm learning in another?" ""What questions do I have about my learning?"

making student development visible and accessible to the student, through video portfolios, written portfolios, and multi media collections of work

The challenge for all of us engaged in the design of portfolio assessment is to assist our students to learn how to make their products more "interwoven and complete," weighing "the stress of every chord" to assure that the portfolio becomes an expressio

the portfolio can be a structure to help an individual express meaning. But its quality depends up what the individual does with it.

the unit of analysis for assessment should be a system of activities and practices and take place on multiple time scales —from hours to months

the scope of valued learning outcomes for informal learning activi - ties should include social, emotional, and developmental outcomes as well as content knowledge and should include learning by groups and whole projects as well as by individuals

We believe that it should be a system of activities and practices over time; these include the actions of individual learn - ers as well as the roles of other participants, such as mediating tools, semiotic media, and local conditions directly relevant to and supportive of (or obstructing) the learning activities

Conventionally, an (occasionally naïve) attribu - tion of a valued condition to some specific cause (e.g., to an intervention). Rarely, however, are valued learning goals the outcome of discrete, identifiable causes.

Assessment, evaluation and research all build on documen - tation but may require different modes and foci of documen - tation. In more traditional terms,

Know-that matters only insofar as it is mobilized as part of know-how; know-how (cultural capital) matters for career futures and social policy only when effectively combined with know-who (social capital).

Learning that matters is learning that lasts and that is mobilized across tasks and domains

Second is the improved ability to act collaboratively, coor - dinating and completing tasks with others, assisting them, and productively using affective sensibilities in doing so

First is the personal increase of comfort with, and capacity to partici - pate in, activities that involve inquiry, investigation, and repre - sentation of phenomena in a widening range of domains.

emphasize the importance of taking into account in assessment design the incorporation of relevant knowledge about the history of the project, the community, and the partici - pating organizations and knowledge of the current wider insti - tutional contexts

“Know-who” is as important as know-how in getting things done.

As an aspect of human development—at the individual, group, or organizational level—the learning that mat - ters is learning that is used.

that simple declarative knowledge is only one valued outcome of learning and is too often overemphasized in assessment designs to the exclusion or marginalization of other equally or more important outcomes.

Informal learning experiences, in contrast, build on the diverse interests and curiosity of learners and support their self- motivated inquiries.

ond, to offer program staffs, project funders, and other supporters recommendations of good practices in project assessment and identifiable needs for devel - oping improved assessment techniques.

first, to offer to those who design and assess informal learning programs a model of good assessment practice, a tool kit of methods and approaches, and pointers to the relevant literature

to reviewing the literature, the authors convened three expert meetings involving a total of 25 participants to dis - cuss key issues, identify successful approaches and outstanding challenges,

many sig - nificant learning outcomes may be unpredictable in advance of the learner’s participation

learning goals pursued by participants are generally open-ended, dependent in part on available resources and on repurposed ways to use those resources

“Informal learning” is both a broad category and shorthand for a more complex combination of organized activities in face- to-face or online settings other than formal schools in which particular features are especially salient.

what works in informal learn - ing and what doesn’t

knowledge base of science 2 Introduction learning in informal environments (Bell et al. 2009

identifying one primary audience

Faculty members have the capacity to create their own meaning and feel comfortable and enjoy making sense of the thematic arrangement of objects. Students, on the other hand, usually sought out interpretive devices, like text labels, for an explanation of how they were “supposed to feel.” Further, students did not perceive the thematic organization of the works of art as the interpretive device, whereas faculty did. While most faculty used the text labels to reinforce their own thinking and reassure them they were on the right track, most students used the text labels as their entry point to understanding and experiencing the exhibition.

Faculty and students had distinctly different experiences

RK&A believes that successful exhibitions result when staff acknowledges the perspectives, perceptions, and knowledge of their target audience.

There are two essential building blocks to creating a success project: 1) selecting an audience; and 2) articulating clear outcomes.

we promote the lifecycle approach to exhibition evaluation because we know that when evaluation procedures are built into an exhibition’s lifecycle

The presence of volunteers further added to visitors’ experiences as volunteers’ presence encouraged visitors to ask questions, look for hints when appropriate, and learn about the mathematical principles behind the exhibits.

inviting and amusing nature of the exhibition, designed to be interactive, entertaining, provocative, and challenging all at the same time

follow-up telephone interviews with visitors one month after each festival date in order to identify how visitors’ ideas about math change over time.

onsite interviews with visitors

RK&A explored the ways in which science festival visitors used the MM2GO exhibition and how the exhibition affected visitors’ ideas and attitudes about mathematics.

Conventional wisdom has it that practice makes perfect and that expertise is the natural outcome of years of practice. But few people become good writers, no matter how much they write.

But as a society, we are not concerned with novices. Eventually they will quit being novices, without our having to do anything about it. The important question is what they will become. Will they become experts in their lines of work or will they swell the ranks of incompetent or mediocre functionaries?