Assessment and feedback

In this session The core questions for assessment were:

  1. What are the goals and intended outcomes of assessment and feedback in vocational education?

Students should get feedback while they are still mindful of the learning target and there is still time for them to act upon it. Teacher’s feedback should give the student a clear understanding of what to do next on points that the need to work on. Achievement feedback describes what was done by student well and why. Improvement feedback describes what more should be done.

Based on Gartner’s definition, assessment is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence to use by learners and their teachers to identify where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there. Assessment is not only about the teacher grading the student. The core intended outcome of assessment is a competent graduate that employers expect.

Assessment’s goals is to give valuable information to:

  • Students: monitor, motivate and guide their learning
  • Teachers: monitor, diagnose, certify teaching and learning
  • Education provider: evaluate and judge program success

2.What are the regulations and principles that outline the methods and principles of assessment in vocational education and higher education?

We had a task to think and discuss about these questions:

  • What kind of experiences have you had as a student or teacher related to the evaluation?
  • Was it fair and equal?
  • Were you informed about its criteria?
  • Did you have possibility to discuss about your own performance with your teacher?

Here is the summary of students’ experiences:

  • End of course grades reflect students’ knowledge not their skills but the criteria is mostly clear.
  • In peer assessment, students should be advised enough to know how to assess each other.
  • Small, open book tests could be a good self-assessment method for the students. If it follows by a discussion on the answers could also be a good teaching/learning method.
  • Group assessment could be unfair as it doesn’t reflect individual contribution.
  • Assessments of essays and reports are challenging.
  • Entrance tests are mostly based on interview and applicant’s motivation letter. Interviewer’s subjective opinion can easily affect the applicant’s assessment.
  • Not many of teachers have time for discussion of student’s performance.

These questions and discussions could open up my mind very well about different aspects of assessment.

  1. What is the difference of assessing competence and assessing learning process?

This time we had plan to use a questionnaire as a pretask for students concerning their experiences about assessments. But when we noticed that other teams are using the same plan, we changed our method to ‘Case teaching’. Here is our case study:

Case study Pekka

Pekka is a male student at the vocational school in Oulu. Pekka studies business IT but obviously doesn´t know what he wants to do later in life.

So far Pekka has past all the courses, however, not always with the best grades. Teachers at school have assessment rounds and need to assess Pekka´s process and skills for eventual further education. (and here we need your help)

Pekka is a young man who can completely lose himself with programming but he seems to have trouble with focusing attention to other subjects. His IT teachers see Pekka as creative and able to think out of the box but most other teachers see a boy who´s struggling with the “simple” things.

For instance, teachers and school staff never see him hanging out with friends and in the class he only answers questions that are directed towards him. Also, his language is vague and he hardly follows the social rules of conversation.

No one knows if Pekka really enjoys school and when someone´s asks he´ll get a vague answer while Pekka stares at the floor.

During the staff meeting at school, Pekka´s supervisor brings up his limited focus and asks his colleagues for advice. Teachers are more than willing to tailor Pekka´s needs and keep his interest alive but they wonder what kind of assessment methods should they use?

By discussion on pekka’s assessment methods such as individual assessment, assessment through computer games, … students were ready for lecture part to see the importance of proper assessment to guide students’ studies in right way. We used Prezi to present our task. It has more visual facilities than Powerpoint but sharing screen during presentation was challenging.  Here is the summary of differences that we had discussed during this session.

Standard grading system

Competency-based system
Credit awarded based on seat time Credit awarded based on learning
Constant time based credit Students earn credit or advance in content at their own pace.

 
Student’s proficiency is measured solely based on well-defined course objectives Student’s performance & application is evaluated
Allow the amount of demonstrated learning during this constant time to vary The standards for demonstrated learning are held constant
The unit of learning is static The unit of learning becomes modular
Emphasis on summative assessment Emphasis on formative assessment
Summative assessment is fixed-form test Summative assessment is adaptive
Single grade Assessment rubrics are explicit
Even well designed examination with high reliability doesn’t guarantee predicted validity Higher validity of assessment
Teachers assess learning through standard examination Teachers assess skills or concepts in multiple contexts and multiple ways

At the end of session, we had a small practical assessment through Kahoot.I enjoyed using Prezi and Kahoot but for next time I like to experience Prezi in Remote mode and also using other platforms such as GroupZap to have more interaction with students.

4.What are the most common assessment methods, how do they work and differ from each other?

Blue team provided their lesson through GroupZap. During their presentation, we tried altogether to find out more about different assessment methods which can be used in different stages. For example: Cognitive development test for children age 5-7, Maturity test, Compulsory school certificate exam, Cross word puzzles, work/job seeker testing, matriculation exam, group exam, individual exam, multiple choice A,B,C,D, peer feedback, essay, customer feedback form, language proficiency test and etc.