Unit 1- Assessment in the Classroom Revisited
In this Unit, the exploration activity, together with the learning of two scholarly articles gave me a great overview of the definition of educational assessment, the purposes of assessment, as well as the role of assessment in the education culture. It is important to know that assessments provide educators with both objective and subjective data in order to determine student progress and skill competence. The information collected from assessments not only help educators plan the next step instructions, but also help other stakeholders such as districts to determine where to distribute money or policy makers in terms of the efficacy of education.
A very interesting idea I have learned from the exploration activity is when Dr. William indicates that in effective assessments, the retrieval practice together with the hypercorrection effect is very beneficial for long-term learning. This is very true when it comes with the law of learning.
In the Newton article, three broad purposes of assessment stand out among various purposes argued: assessment to assist learning—formative assessment; assessment of individual student achievement—summative assessment; assessment to evaluate programmes (Newton, 2007, p.156). It also identified the differences between formative assessment and summative assessment which mostly have to do with purpose, portion of course covered, and level of generalization sought by items in the instrument used to collect data for the assessment (p. 152).
A very interesting idea I have learned from the exploration activity is when Dr. William indicates that in effective assessments, the retrieval practice together with the hypercorrection effect is very beneficial for long-term learning. This is very true when it comes with the law of learning.
When we first learn about the new knowledge,our memory is most fresh, but as time prolongs, the easier it gets to forget about what we have learned. Thus constant repetition, retrieval of knowledge, and hypercorrection of misconceptions, as what assessments bring, would help reinforce our learning.
In the Shepard article, the role of assessment is discussed in understanding of different learning theories. It provides a historical overview illustrates the evolvement of curriculum, learning theories, and assessment that enlightens the new idea of instruction and the transformation of educational assessment. It is inspiring to learn when she points out the two paths assessment need to change- the form and content must be changed to better represent important thinking and problem solving skills in each of the disciplines as well as the way that assessment is used in classrooms and how it is regarded by teachers and students (Shepard, 2000, p.7).
In my professional experience, it is crucial to understand the purposes and the roles assessment play in Chinese language and culture instructions. Understanding the evolvement and different types of assessment helps me in planning and designing instructions according to students' comprehension and learning pace. Adjustments can be made if data collection from assessments indicates certain weakness in the unit instruction so it can better assist me in differentiating and helping each individual student achieve the proficiency goals. The assessment results are also a good evidence to attract more Chinese learning resources from higher institutions in the U.S. and in China. In addition, learning about various aspects of educational assessment also encourages my application of technology use to strengthen my instructions and gather learning feedbacks.
I really enjoyed reading through your Unit 1 blog post! As a visual person, I really appreciated how you incorporated all of the graphics. I agree with your interesting idea from Dr. William and long-term learning. That was a point that struck me as well. Thanks for sharing your blog :)
ReplyDeleteHi Chang,
ReplyDeleteI, too, really liked the graphics you used in your blog and you have inspired me to try to incorporate some into my future blogs, so thank you! The visuals on retention really are powerful and add an incredibly important dimension to the complexities of assessment. In a K-12 setting it seems clear that there are "set expectations" regarding certain knowledge that all students are expected to have and to the degree that students have that knowledge will be evidenced by the following year's teacher. It is interesting for me to think about this long term retention in higher education where we only have a student for 15 weeks and then may never see them again. Given, general education courses, it is possible that students will never again directly be assessed for long term learning on a particular topic.
Robin
Very great summary and reflection on what we have learned from the Unit 1 learning. I liked the fact that you very well understand that the nature of our job (i.e., teacher) is to design instruction—I view that our profession is really an instructional designer who is tasked with making a better instruction, and this job is more of on-the-fly decision-making process (i.e., pedagogical design thinking process in the moment) from various evidence/data produced while in learning and teaching, as opposed to unfolding the planned work in a given class time. In this respect, teacher's assessment literacy, in particular on-going assessments in the context, is of paramount importance to making a better instruction. Yet, I wonder how many teachers really think about the importance of assessment designs as suitable to their own context.
ReplyDeleteI am really impressed with the amount and thought that was put into this blog post. Especially all the extra visuals. They were very helpful. I would love to hear more about how assessments are done in China sometime.
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