Mini-Assignment 2: Bryan Funk, Glenn Goslin, & Stephen Hawkins
March 4, 2009
We have identified that summative assessment can hinder the learning process for students. Black and Wiliam (1998) clearly state that these types of assessments promote rote and superficial learning, harm the learning process, and provide little reflective feedback for the student or teacher. Our technology enhanced learning environment will address this problem by incorporating assessment for learning strategies within the design. The design will ensure that the learning becomes visible with descriptive feedback so both student and teacher can proceed in a feed-forward progression of learning.
Our design is geared for junior secondary (grades 8-10) mathematics and science curriculum. We will utilize WISE (Web-based Inquiry Science Environment) to develop a learning project involving data analysis and the environmental impact of climate change. Our goal is to develop a unit of study where students will analyze their own effects on climate change through an exploration of their consumption, waste, and contributions to carbon emissions. This cross-curricular project is relevant to students’ lives as it will enable students to analyze data and reflect throughout upon their personal environmental impact.
WISE’s pedagogical principles will enable us to address our problem, that of summative assessment. The four basic principles that guide WISE project design are “make science accessible for all students, make thinking visible, provide social support so that students can learn from each other, and promote autonomy and lifelong learning” (Gobert, Snyder, & Houghton, 2002, p. 2-3). Accessibility relates to relevant curriculum design that we can differentiate to suit individual levels of ability. Making thinking visible, by utilizing metacognitive strategies, allows both the student and teacher to understand the progression of learning. Providing social support, which is supported by constructivist and social constructivist theory, will enable students to learn from each other’s visible thought process (Gobert, Snyder, & Houghton, 2002). Our project design and topic will undoubtedly promote lifelong learning whereby students can continuously reflect on their environmental impacts, and will be equipped to manage various forms of data.
The WISE principles fit very strongly with assessment for learning (formative assessment) strategies. It is important that students are involved in the creation of, and have a clear understanding of, the learning intentions, expected outcomes and criteria for success of the work they are being asked to do. Assessment for learning will make the student’s learning visible and will enable both the teacher and learner to reflect and adjust the learning process. The learners play an active role in understanding and monitoring the scaffolding of knowledge and skills as they approach the outcomes. Students partner with their teacher to continuously monitor their learning and set goals for what to learn next. Students communicate evidence of learning to one another, to their teacher, and to their families at every stage along the learning journey, not only at the end. These strategies will ensure that students are inside the assessment process, watching themselves grow, feeling in control of their success, and believing that continued success is within reach if they keep trying.
Assessment for learning not only provides descriptive and reflective feedback to guide the learning process, but also empowers students to control and dictate the direction of their learning. This also meshes well with how WISE is implemented, giving students the opportunity to follow their own path in developing their understanding. Purposeful use of AFL will enable students to experience metacognition whereby they engage and reflect on their learning experience. “Intelligent thought involves ‘metacognition’ or self monitoring of learning and thinking” (Shepard, 2000. p. 8). Black and Wiliam (1998) clearly state that formative assessment, in this case through a WISE unit, will enable greater student achievement and a higher standard of learning. We will incorporate computer adaptive assessment within the design so that regardless of instructional preference, students will receive regular assessment and monitoring of their learning.
The learning theory that we are utilizing in our design is social constructivism. In order to construct new knowledge and understandings learners have to interact socially through conversation and in activities with other learners that may possess more or less knowledge and skills. Vygotsky (1978) believed that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition and he argued that the full potential for cognitive development in individuals depends upon the “zone of proximal development “. This means that the necessary prerequisites for learning new knowledge and skills have been fulfilled. It is the zone where students are “ready” to learn. Ensuring that new knowledge and skills is within each learner’s zone of proximal development depends upon full social interaction. Through this social interaction, in the form of peer collaboration or teacher/adult guidance, the range of knowledge and skill that can be developed exceeds what can be attained alone.
The role of ongoing and descriptive feedback in social constructivism, when the goal is to assist learners to construct their knowledge, cannot be overstated. Our design will utilize the power of computer adaptive assessment (CAA) as a form of AFL. Depending on the level of mastery of the outcomes by the student, they will receive specific feedback as to what outcomes they have mastered, and specific outcomes they will need to spend further time on in order to move forward. By dividing the course material into manageable units or outcomes we are also able to incorporate scaffolding or assisted development. The student will receive feedback and will self-assess on four key questions:
1. What am I capable of on my own right now?
2. What am I capable of with guidance and help right now?
3. What will I be capable of on my own later?
4. What will I be capable of with guidance and help later?
Framing these learning goals with “I” statements empowers students with the sense of control over their own progression. Our design, with the assistance of computer adaptive assessment will make our students learning visible so that teachers, peers and self can engage in critical discourse to determine the individual’s mastery of the outcomes and help to scaffold the construction of knowledge (feed-forward learning). The scaffolding of “what I can do” with “what I am not yet able to do yet”, within a social learning environment, is critical to social construction of knowledge (Pear & Crone-Todd, 2002).
References
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment [Electronic version]. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2). 139-44. 32
Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. (1992). The Jasper series as an example of anchored instruction: Theory, program, description, and assessment data. Educational Psychologist, 27(3), 291-315. 27
Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Scott, P., & Mortimer, E. (1994). Constructing scientific knowledge in the classroom [Electronic version]. Educational Researcher, 23. 5-12. 32
Gobert, J., Snyder, J., & Houghton, C. (2002, April). The influence of students’ understanding of models on model-based reasoning. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), New Orleans, Louisiana. Retrieved February 23, 2009, from http://mtv.concord.org/publications/epistimology_paper.pdf 48
Koehn. (2008). Together is better (BCTF Teacher Inquirer). Retrieved February 18, 2009, Web site:http://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Publications/TeacherInquirer/archive/2008-09/2008-10/Koehn.pdf 53
Pear, J. J., & Crone-Todd, D. E. (2002). A social constructivist approach to computer-mediated instruction [Electronic version]. Computers & Education, 38(1-3). 221-231. 32
Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture [Electronic version]. Educational Researcher, 29(7). 4-14. 32
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.