Application of Assessment Analytics to Improve Teaching and Learning: Why and How
Julie Wei is a Senior Research Analyst at UBC Faculty of Arts. Julie is an interdisciplinary researcher, with graduate degrees in Educational Psychology (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016), Statistics (Master, UIUC, 2013), and Curriculum & Pedagogy (Master, Henan Normal University, 2005). Before moving to Canada, Julie had taught at K-12 and universities for more than ten years. Julie’s research has focused primarily on how to effectively design and use assessment, evaluation and learning analytics to improve teaching and learning.
In this session, Julie will discuss why and how assessment analytics has the potential to make a valuable contribution to the field of Learning Analytics by broadening its scope and increasing its usefulness.
“Assessment is a central element of the learning process, as it not only defines what learners consider important and measures their achievements across all phases of learning process but also gives instructor and institutions a valuable feedback about whether the program goals and institutional objectives have achieved. Thus, assessment analytics benefits would extend to all stakeholders involved in the educational process. In order to get maximal benefits from assessment analytics, assessments should be designed mindfully to help collect finer level test data. In contrast to traditional methods of assessment that provides only a final score, a diagnostic assessment has the potential to provide more detailed information about in which specific areas that learners do well or need to make improvements if it is well-constructed, thus it can collect, analyze and report data about leaners for the purpose of “understanding and optimizing, learning and the environment in which it occurs.” (Siemens G, 2013). Diagnostic assessment is especially helpful to understand complicated learning process in content domains that are traditional considered to be difficult. In this talk, I share with the audience how assessment should be designed mindfully and revised iteratively, as well as how the granular information could be used to help teachers, students and schools make improvements.”
This session, we will be meeting in *DL-005* which is the classroom right across from our normal meeting place (DL011).