Assessment
Assessment – measuring student performance and learning.
Reflection of Learning
Reflection is the foundation of purposeful learning. The central part to reflection is to examine one’s experience rather than just living it. When we develop the ability to explore and be curious about our own experiences and actions we create the opportunities for purposeful learning.
The key to reflection is learning how to take perspective on one’s own actions and experience-in other words, to examine that experience rather than just living it. By developing the ability to explore and be curious about our own experience and actions, we suddenly open up the possibilities of purposeful learning- derived not from books or experts, but from our work and over lives. This is the purpose of reflection: to allow the possibility of learning through experience, whether that is the experience of a meeting, a project, a disaster, a success, a relationship, or any other internal or external event, before, during or after it has occurred (Amulya, 2004, p.1).
Part of my reflection considered and analyzed the information presented in the articles introduced in this module. According to the literature there are two broad forms of assessment, both attempting to measure student performance (Jenkins, 2004). Formative assessment is intended to measure student work through the formative and development phase. In my clinical course formative assessment takes place daily during every encounter the student has providing dental hygiene care for clients. The student is familiar with the assessment criteria that guides the student towards achieving competency and the clinical teacher mentors and provides feedback continuously. Summative assessment is intended to measure a student’s final or cumulative performance and the assessment content should be closely related to the learning objectives of the course (Brown, 2004). In my clinical course the student also has an opportunity for summative evaluation in the final semester; there are clinical competency assessments where the student is expected to demonstrate entry to practice skills in all aspect of client care. At the end of the six semesters the students have an opportunity to evaluate the clinical program and the feedback is analyzed by faculty to identify curriculum changes, and improvements.
There are many methods used for assessment strategies, quantitative measures such as quizzes or exams to measure student performance and qualitative activities measures where learners are given criterion that outline levels of performance, often presented using a rubric based on numbers or words to determine the level of performance, 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest, as an example. Or the use of words such as excellent, good, sufficient, not sufficient as an assessment guide.
After reading the course literature about assessment strategies, most of my focus was to develop questions for the Moodle site quiz that would capture the most important information related to client care and to create questions that would assist the learner in further developing the knowledge they had previously acquired. For example, I attempted to create essay type questions that would encourage the student to explore why they were practicing and implementing protocol for care and the importance of this protocol as it relates to client safety.
I contemplated and reflected about the assignment we are currently engaging in and recognized that the progressive learning activities related to building and developing the Moodle site first hand with minimal instruction and assistance is very effective in knowledge construction and has created meaningful learning. I have learnt an incredible amount of information about Learning Management Systems (LMS), further developed my understanding of concepts such as HTML text, plugins, tags, importing links, and the various types of assessment. Furthermore, I have been reminded about the emerging idea that we live in a knowledge rich society, demanding a very different approach to teaching that will enable learners to develop a diverse skill set, analyze and evaluate information versus simply accumulate knowledge (Stephani, 2004).
Critical thinking skills were required for the content development of the assessment questions. I gave considerable thought about what type of content is important, when and how the students should take the quiz, what type of questions would assist them in learning the content or concepts. I also considered type of questions would assist the student in identifying gaps in their knowledge. I vision my Moodle course site as a extension to clinical practice and intend to offer alternative options of assessment, my goal is to create a learning environment that will promote and create “reflective practice”. This learning activity will certainly provide foundational knowledge for my learning journey.
From a technology perspective using the Moodle functions to format multiple choice, matching, short answer and essay questions was straight forward, the challenge was in developing the questions and what content would be most appropriate to truly assess a student’s performance. The learning challenge for me was the technical aspect of formatting an embedded question, a requirement of the assignment. Using the Moodle help option stated that an external program would be required to develop this type of question and further suggested that Hot Potatoes 6, being external software would be compatible with Moodle, the instructions were to develop the embedded questions using Hot Potatoes and then import the questions into the Moodle Quiz. Developing the questions in Hot Potatows 6 was fairly straight forward, however, my challenge was with importing the question into the Moodle Quiz. I spent a significant amount of time trying to figure this out and this I found very frustrating. Further in my reading on the MET site it stated that external programs could not be used to develop any of the quiz questions, with this information I then continued to explore formatting within the Moodle site.
In conclusion the learning activity was very meaningful and has made me recognize that I need to further understand and develop more depth and breadth in programming and using various types of software. I am going to explore Dreamweaver. I have also determined that I need to further explore the grading component of assessment and explore various options to score an answer. I selected a grade of 1 mark for each question as this being my first attempt at formatting an online assessment it made the excercise straight forward. Further exploring the feedback function is also one of my learning goals, feedback is helpful to the student as they move through the process of testing their knowledge.
References
Amulya, J. (2004). What is Reflective Practice? Center for Reflective Community Practice http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/whatisreflectivepractice.pdf
Brown, S. (2004) Assessment for Learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 1, 81-89.
Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
http://hotpot.uvic.ca
Jenkins, M. (2004). Unfulfilled promise: Formative assessment using computer-aided assessment. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education , 1, 67-80.
Moodle. http://moodle.org
Stephani, L., (2004) Assessment of Student Learning: promoting a scholarly approach. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 1,51-66.