Assess for Learning
Take a moment to study this French artist's prediction of what education would look like in the year 2000. What is the teacher doing? What are the students doing?
Notice how the teacher is grinding up resources (a.k.a., knowledge) in order to "dump" the knowledge into the learner's brain? Meanwhile, the student passively "absorbs" this knowledge. This can be eerily accurate, right? Whether online or in-seat, many go-to teaching strategies tend to encourage passive learning, i.e., the teacher lectures/demonstrates, while the student remembers and regurgitates.
Source: France in 2000 year (XXI century). Future school. Jean Marc Cole or Willemard, 1901 or 1910. Wikimedia. Links to an external site.
Passive vs. Active Learning
In Module 1, we introduced some foundational learning theories that we are going to revisit in a little more detail throughout this module. The first of these is Active Learning.
In passive learning, learners are often the recipients of information that was discovered, synthesized, and analyzed by the teacher. Learners are expected to absorb information and ask questions about anything they don't understand or want to learn more about.
The major downfall of passive learning is that it is often focused on what content to disseminate over what the students should be learning (i.e., what they should be able to do by the end of the course). We are asking students to comprehend and regurgitate information, but not demonstrate that they can actually apply or transfer that knowledge. Focusing on what content to cover over which skills to teach can also lead to the teacher wondering why the student didn't learn what was covered and the student wondering how they are supposed to study for the exam.
In contrast, active learning is a strategy that engages learners in the process of discovering, synthesizing, analyzing, and disseminating information. Students are invited to practice and perform the skills that the course is designed to teach, as well as think about (i.e., reflect upon) what they are doing.
While traditional, high-stakes assessments definitely have a role in the learning process, using traditional assessments alone can adversely affect your student's motivation to learn, excitement about the course topic, and ability to achieve the learning objectives. In short, it can make things boring and prevent learning altogether.
Your task at the end of this module will be to layout a plan for the assignments you will use in your course, what role they serve in the student's learning process, how and when you will give feedback to the students. When making those decisions about how you're going to approach when and how to use assessments and when and how to give feedback on them, we want to promote active learning at the heart of your approach. In other words, we encourage you to:
- design assessments that focus on the application of knowledge and the demonstration of skills;
- foster the students' ability to assess their own learning ;
- provide clear standards of quality; and
- provide feedback that students can apply within the course to improve their work.
References
Gulikers, J. T. M., Bastiaens, T. J., & Kirschner, P.A. (2004). A Five-Dimensional Framework for Authentic Assessment Links to an external site.. Educational Technology Research and Development. 52(3): 67–86.
Fink, D. L. (2015). Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass
Freeman, Scott, et. al 2014. Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the United States of America. 111(23): 8410–8415. Access URL Links to an external site. This article shows the analysis of 225 studies that compared student performance of traditional lecturing with that of active learning.