My First (and Final??) PBA Post
Whoosh, the week flew by, and I barely got around to posting my initial thoughts of the topic of Product-Based Assessment, and now I need to post my final thoughts. This post will be a mixture of my conflicted thoughts on assessment in general, as well as which already-existing learning technologies do an adequate job of letting student create as they learn and vice versa. Since I should keep my eye on the prize (the Participation Portfolio we will submit at the end of this course, worth 25%), I need to start blogging my ideas more often. Here I go…
In many of the other MET courses, I learned that being well-assessed is an important goal to monitor and to encourage student progress. Yet a curious post on the North Vancouver Teacher Association’s discussion board got me thinking differently about the purpose of assessing students, whether through traditional tests or through product- (project-, problem-, etc, etc) based assessment. Due to the provincial job action, someone provocatively posted that report cards are the administrators’ responsibility, not the teachers’ (even though the latter have had the lion’s share of assessment thrust upon them). Without getting into too much of the politics, I was surprised to read that at some point in time, teachers were more concerned with teaching, and assessment just happened, thanks to the principal and other administrators. Quite frankly, if there was an app that could determine what level students are at, and even plan the next step of their education, I would so pay the $9.99 for that.
What technology makes the best use of PBA? I would reflect upon Emily’s response (thank you!) to my rambling reply for David Vogt’s post and say any technology that teachers can get their hands on is good. I agree that any program or device designed for classroom use will be outdated by the time it gets to the classroom, so it is up to the teachers to acknowledge what the students can do with the gadgets they got. One really inspiring case study showed how teachers in Australia used mobile phones and social networking to provoke an understanding of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Here it is: Carroll, J. & Cameron, D. (2009). Drama, digital pre-text and social media. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied THeatre and Performance, 14(2). 295-312. URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569780902868960
Posted in: Week 10: Product-Based Assessments
Doug Smith 9:31 am on November 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Interesting thoughts there Kyle. In some ways, PBA is “assessment that just happens.” By using the right tool at the right time, a student’s work is their learning and is their assessment. I suppose that sounds a bit glib, but there is truth to it. I don’t think we will ever get away from the assessment part of the product, it is our formative feedback that makes the whole thing work.
cheers
Doug