My ETEC565A e-portfolio

I almost didn’t make it through this week with all the Moodle problems. But here I am, posting about the assessment assignment, after many posts to my classmates, couple of whiny emails to John and countless log ins into Moodle, the assignment is done.

I am not a newbie to assessment, having done that in my previous job, but after I was read Gibbs & Simpson’s straight talk on assessment,I was overwhelmed by their insight into how a student views assessments.  It shocked me to read that a student tries to get an “A” in the easier way possible without doing a whole lot of work.  It was shocking, not because the student was cutting learning corners, but because it was describing me! Even before reading Gibbs & Simpson, I scrolled through the article on my laptop, seeing what was important to read and what I could possibly skim over. C’mon, the article is 26 pages!

All of that is to say that the article made me rethink assessments from the student’s point of view.  Yes, quizes/tests/assignments is to gauge student learning so that teachers can see where the gaps are, but what was profound was what the student was thinking when taking the assessments.  Did they skim through the reading to see what was relevant for the assignment only; did they only study what was on a previous similar exam; what was it that they didn’t find important to study at all?

So having all those thoughts in mind, I took a stab at writing quiz questions and it was tough!  I was used to taking key points out of content and making questions addressing the key points, but some of those points I now realize was not critical to know.  Changing that mindset to create questions that would address critical aspects in the EMR (Electronic Medical Records) application proved to be very difficult.  I had to identify what was really important in the content first then build questions that could weed out who was ready to do this on their own or who would need extra help right away.  Thinking the questions through this way made it clearer to see if the question was “bank” worthy or not.  I wish that I could have spent more time coming up with solid bank worthy questions.