Yingjing Lin's Portfolio

Go to Effective Assessment: Jump out of Score-centered Assessment

Effective Assessment: Jump out of Score-centered Assessment

Nowadays, teachers, students, and parents pay too much attention on exams and scores. Does test really help students' learning? As a part of instruction, assessment should not only play a role as a pressure-maker for students. Effective formative assessment also functions as a guide leading students' learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998). Is there any other method that can systematically assess students' academic achievement and meanwhile facilitate students' learning? The answer certainly is yes, and there are a lot. In my mini-course, I will focus on the assessment of test which has been criticized a lot in these decades. I still believe test is a very helpful method to help teachers get feedback of their instruction and help students to find weakness in their learning. The problem is how to make test more effective? This is what I want to discuss in my mini-course.

Needs Assessment

Intent

This mini-course aims at inspiring instructors’ critical thinking about current forms of assessment which are used frequently in classroom nowadays. Based on the thorough reflection, some effective forms of assessment, self-assessment, peer-assessment, performance-based assessment, portfolio and etc., are introduced. Testing is still an important part of the mini-course. Learner will be guided how to use testing formatively to provide qualitative and informative feedback for both students and teachers, rather than use testing solely summatively to get a score.

Gathered Information

Personal experience:

As a student, when I was a student in K-12, I was always be evaluated by scores. The most important goal for every student is to get highest testing score in order to enroll in universities. Even in higher education, we focus much more on GPA than what we actually learned. As a former elementary school teacher, I and my colleagues always fell into a stereotype that assessing students by scores. We are driven and pushed by various testings which may take place every month, or even every week. We are so busy comparing scores and ranking students that did not pay attention to the information conveyed by the result of testing. The formative function of testing had been totally ignored. The problem has been existing for a long time. Both teachers and students are in great need of an effective form of assessment.

Analysis of learners

This mini-course is for teachers who want to improve their assessment to facilitate their instruction and students’ learning. Some of teachers may be quite comfortable with and used to traditional testing, and unwilling to change, while some desire for improvement of their instructional assessment. Attitude of teachers varies.

Learning Objectives

In the mini-course, given introduction and guideline about effective formative assessment, the learners will classify the different forms of assessment and demonstrate the use of effective formative assessment, by instructional design and practice of formative assessment, interacting with students and collecting students’ feedback, using portfolio, testing, and other support.

Task Analysis

Purpose

By the end of the course, learners will be able to

Critically consider the use of testing

Classify the different forms of assessment

Design instruction with effective formative assessment

Prerequisites

Essential prerequisites

Understand the difference between formative and summative assessment

Identify of different forms of formative assessment
Proper use of rubrics

Procedure of self-assessment

Procedure of peer-assessment

Procedure of using testing formatively

Understand how and when to use those assessments properly

Supportive prerequisites

Experience about classroom assessment

Any information about various forms of assessment

Critical thinking of assessment forms

Positive attitude towards reforming assessment to improve instruction and learning