Assessment Tools

I spent a *long* time meeting the assignment criteria for the Assessment section. It was a long and tedious process which I did not find at all enjoyable. I question the need to create 3 of each type of question. If we are not being evaluated on the question content, it then becomes drill and kill, just like those teachers who made you do the same math problem 24 times because it would help you “remember.”

There were some interesting features of moodle that I discovered, like allowing multiple attempts at quizzes, but taking marks off for each subsequent trial. (the default setting! Yikes!) I did go back and change all the questions so that they didn’t deduct marks. I wonder if this would qualify as authentic assessment? I would hope that if we were using the assessment as part of learning, that there would not be a penalty for not getting it right the first time. I also found it interesting that I could assign a percentage of correctness to different multiple choice answers, and provide general feedback for each one. This could be a useful tool for formative assessment, and one that I tried to take advantage of in my question design.

Sadly, I apparently forgot to do a second iteration of one of the assigned “questions” and lost marks due to that.  I have gone back and added it in. After reading John’s comments about his reasoning for multiple iterations of question types, I still don’t buy in, but I’m also the teacher who will let kids come in at recess and lunch or after school to re-test any time they want until they succeed to their satisfaction.  Maybe this is because of the nature of what I do (practice makes perfect!) My students often tell me that they wish their “regular” teacher would let them try again, and I wonder why they don’t. I have had discussions with colleagues about it and their answer is that if they really wanted to do well they would “study” the first time. My question is, what are they learning if they are just studying for a test?
I did enjoy thinking about how to use some of the concepts outlined in the reading by Gibbs and Simpson (2004) and trying to incorporate them in my questions. I am interested in the area of assessment and will go back and read the optional readings as well.

Reference

Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). “Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Accessed online 11 March 2009 http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf