SEE ONE: WHY
In this unit, you will be introduced to the pedagogical strengths and benefits of assessment for the teaching and learning processes, as well as for its implementation in online environments.
You will also be introduced to some reasons that contribute to its importance.
CONTENT | EXERCISES / TASKS | LEARNING OUTCOMES | |
SEE ONE – Benefits of using online assessment (WHY) | Pedagogical strengths and benefits of assessment
Feedback and assessment Benefits of online assessment
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Self-tests, reflecting questions | Describe the importance of assessment for teachers, students, and parents
Characterize the role of feedback Identify the benefits of online assessment
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Why is assessment important?
Accountability dimension
Arends (2012) points to the fact that “we live in an Era of accountability, an era where citizens and policymakers believe that schooling should be conducted in standards-based environment and that teachers should be accountable for student learning”. Assessment becomes then a key issue, for all the educational community, as teachers, students, parents, policymakers.
Learning dimension
However, if assessment involves certification and grades, to get grades it is necessary that it allows students to identify what they do and do not know. So it is necessary that assessment helps students to learn and teachers to teach.
Assessment contributes to learning when allows students to see how they are doing and to determine whether they understand what they should learn (e.g. Black & William, 2006, for a review of the research about the impact of formative assessment).
Just as assessment should help students, assessment should also help teachers. Frequent assessment allows teachers to see if their teaching has been effective. Assessment also allows teachers to ensure students learn what they need to know in order to meet the course's learning objectives.
Research also shows that formative assessment can improve learning outcomes, presenting the strongest effect among a range of interventions (Hattie, 2017).
Formative assessment activities might include learning diaries (self-reflection), quizzes, portfolios, and informal oral discussion.
Some examples about the importance of assessment for the teaching and learning processes.
The teacher monitors learning through effective assessment - Primary Education
The teacher uses formative assessment to monitor and adjust pacing - Primary Education
Assessment and feedback
A key issue in formative assessment is feedback.
Feedback exists in any process, activity or information that enhances learning by providing students with the opportunity to reflect on their current or recent level of attainment
Feedback is not the grade on a paper (Wiggins, 2012), "it should provide learners with information on how they’re performing and the comments, questions, information, on how we are achieving our predetermined goal". Feedback includes emotions, facial expressions, language, tone, body language, gestures, and comments made during the learning process and can be related to assessment and grades.
Feedback can take many formats. It can be provided individually or to groups, it can be delivered orally or written. It can take format as advice, guidance, direction.
Efficient feedback
Importance of marking & feedback
Examples of using feedback
Assessment strategies and feedback in Higher Education
Sudents as partners in assessment and feedback assessment
Why to use online assessment?
It is important that educators are aware of the benefits and drawbacks of using online assessment tools so the potential of these tools can be maximized and the risks of drawbacks can be minimized.
Benefits
- Frequent assessments
- Flexibility
- Students are self-guided learners
- Immediate feedback
- Students also have online assessment tools and feedback available to them at all times.
Drawbacks and challenges
- Cheating
- Easy for students to use extra resources when taking assessments when this is not allowed
- Students and teachers may not have the minimum skills required to use technology
- Students and teachers are both required to own/acquire technologies
Feedback & online assessment
Immediate and frequent feedback is considered an important reason to integrate online assessment in your teaching practices.
Additionally, there are a number of tech tools that enable timely, relevant, and action-oriented feedback, inserting comments directly in the margins of students' writing, as well as voice-to-text tools or visual tools.
Recap
Recap of central points covered in the ‘1-5 see one - why - sections’: