Assessment challenges and opportunities
Planning assessment in a cooperative setting (such as the production of digital films) presents interesting challenges. To implement effective evaluation strategies, one must be:
- clear on what tasks will be assessed,
- what procedures will be used,
- and how the tasks and assessment procedures will correspond.
Three types of assessment are typically used:
- Diagnostic assessment (pre-testing… often dismissed): refers to student’s actual level of knowledge and skills
- Formative assessment: monitors students’ progress toward learning goals
- Summative assessment: provides data to judge the final level of students’ learning
Evaluation tactics in situated learning, including constructivism, are characterized by assessment being an intrinsic part of the learning process.
When assessment is well designed, it provides a potent motivation for students and fosters study habits correlated with the educational goals of the course.
Spanish:
- In my Spanish classes, students constantly refer to personal experiences when talking and writing about various themes. They are also invited to create oral presentations for which they select the topics.
Film:
- In the film classes, I use self, peer, group and public assessments to verify the knowledge acquisition & learning process.
UBC Moodle: Assessment & technology
- In my Moodle tool assessment project, I created a quiz which combined formative and summative assessment questions.
- As a rule, I only use multiple choice exercises to practice linguistic skills. Assessments are usually in the form of more substantial written and oral tasks.
- For learning Spanish, if the whole course is done online, the need for chats and forums is much greater than if the course is a combination of face to face and online strategies.
- For digital film making, since the medium must be distributed somehow in order to be viewed, an online e-portfolio with the various components of the film production process is a sound idea. However, due to student confidentiality, I would not put the assessment results online.