Engaging Ways to Check for Understanding
Warm-up
For this course, it can be beneficial to keep a digital journal for your thoughts and reflections. You may choose a Word doc, a Google doc, or even paper and pen.
Watch the brief video below. Then answer, how effective are traditional multiple choice tests in checking for a student’s understanding of a topic?
Introduction
This final unit sets out to create dynamic and inclusive learning experiences that cater to diverse engagement styles. Particularly, we will focus on the implementation of multiple versions of activities or assignments, acknowledging that information becomes accessible when presented in diverse ways. Providing autonomy in choosing engagement methods and allowing flexibility in the learning process enhances students' connection with the material. Through the exploration of surveys, feedback mechanisms, and observational techniques, we aim to equip educators with valuable tools to gauge and enhance learner engagement in their classrooms.
Outcomes
- Learn methods and strategies for assessing and measuring learner engagement.
- Discuss the use of surveys, feedback, and observational techniques to evaluate engagement.
Engaging Ways to Check for Understanding
- Use activities that provide students with a diverse range of engagement opportunities: Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework which strives to capture the diversity of student learning preferences and is applicable to any field or subject. Consider the following strategies while designing learning activities to best reach students who may possess a variety of engagement styles.
- Use more ungraded or credit-upon-completion assignments: Short reflections on class material or participation in classroom discussions can easily be turned into credit-upon-completion components of a course. These types of informal assignments hold students accountable for doing work and can prepare students to think critically in advance of more important graded assessments without presenting a significant intellectual risk for them or a grading burden for instructors.
- Offer multiple versions of activities or assignments: Information is only accessible to students when it engages their cognition, so it is essential to give students both autonomy in choosing how to engage with the material as well as a diversity of methods for them to learn and assess their skills. Consider utilizing information from multiple types of sources or modalities when giving lectures or allowing students the freedom to choose different types of projects for a final assessment.
- Build peer review into open-ended assignments: While peer review can be beneficial for increasing engagement, students are most accepting when instructors inform them of the importance and potential benefits of participating in such activities. Take time to establish peer review norms and expectations, so that students can trust they will be treated with respect and be more open to feedback. Ask students to account for how and why they incorporated the feedback and when they did not. Consider how and when you give your feedback on student work so that it does not unintentionally undercut the peer review process. If your feedback comes after a draft that incorporates peer feedback, that is an opportunity for you to reinforce the value of that peer feedback by pointing to places where they successfully integrated the feedback or places where they should have.
Introduction
Do you think high stakes testing has a place in the future of education?
Unit 1: Understanding the Concept of Learner Engagement
Unit 2: Ideal Design Qualities