Assessment and Evaluation
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The Academic Dishonesty Redirect: Be Explicit, Know your Policies, Assess Authentically
[social_share/] [social-bio] At the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness, when faculty and instructors ask us about academic integrity, we will inevitably steer the conversation to three main values: the value of being very explicit with students about the rules you expect them to follow the value of understanding the rules of your home department or college as well as the university policy on academic misconduct, the value of designing assessment for authentic learning. Here’s a video that demonstrates this tendency quite nicely, if I do say so myself: And, for further evidence of our redirect, coming up on Monday, October 6 1:30 – 2:15 in the GMCTE Classroom, as…
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Problem Solving = Great! But what kind of problems are our students really learning?
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler What learning are we really asking our students to demonstrate, and what are we saying actually matters through our assessments? Within statistics, exams require students to apply statistical procedure such as t-tests to questions e.g., is there a significant difference between boys and girls on self-confidence or neural activity when the mean is… where the criteria of significance is typical, the problem to solve is clear and familiar, the variables are provided, and even the values are given. Just plug into memorized equations. In contrast, what if I was to ask on assignments (for practicing) and the exam questions such as presenting a news…
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‘Driving’ the Lesson: The Pre-Assessment (Part I)
[social_share/] [social-bio] In my last post, I wrote about objectives and the value of pausing in the “everyday” experiences of learning. In a lesson, one place to really pause and pay attention is during the pre-assessment. This is the part of the lesson when instructors can assess what students already know and where students contribute their own experiences or ideas to the lesson. Daniel Pink, the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About what Motivates Us, suggests that all human beings have a need “to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.” He claims three principles are central…
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Course Design Institute Being Offered as ‘Flipped’ Workshop
[social_share/] [social-bio] For several years, the GMCTE has offered the Course Design Institute (CDI), a four to five-day intensive workshop that walks instructors through the development or redevelopment of one of their courses. This May, the CDI we be delivered in an entirely different format than in the past by “flipping” it to provide participants with more hands-on work time. While in the past, participants attending all day for the four to five days during a single week, this offering will require participants to attend three Thursday mornings over three weeks in May. They will also watch videos and complete assignments outside of these meeting times. They will post their…
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What? A Menu of Assessment Options?
[social_share/] [social-bio] I have recently come upon a few interesting ideas about the conditions we create for assessment in higher education, especially with respect to deterring academic dishonesty. Standing out to me right now is a 2013 book I’ve been reading by James Lang titled “Cheating Lessons.” This book provides inspiration, encouragement, and practical advice to teachers in higher education. Lang’s premise is that cheating is an inappropriate response by students to environments that convey an emphasis on performance within the context of extremely high stakes and where extrinsic motivators overpower the “intrinsic joy or utility of the task itself” (p. 30). Lang points his readers to an innovative assessment…
- Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, General, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies
Four Student Misconceptions About Learning
[social_share/] [social-bio] The main section of this blog post is a reprint of an article from Faculty Focus by Maryellen Welmer. It follows a brief introduction by Nancy Turner. I thought readers of this blog would be interested in the article reprinted below on common student misconceptions about learning. These points are usefully discussed openly with students at the start of a course or year of study but are also points for faculty to be aware of when planning curriculum and learning experiences. Both explicit discussion of the misconceptions alongside curriculum, assessment and session design to implicitly counter their effects (specific examples for each are included in the text of…
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Catching a Falling Star or Lost in Outer Space? That’s what feedback is for!
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler What would it be like to wait for 31 months before finding out if you were on your way to success or have burst into flames? The European Space Agency had such a wait to hear how its Rosetta space mission to study a comet is going, hearing this week for the first time from their spacecraft that had finally travelled close enough to the sun to have solar power to wake up. In comparison most 4-year undergraduate programs are 32 months (e.g., September 2013 to April 2017 not counting summers) – a long time to wait for student feedback on their orientation and…
- Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, General, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies
Self-Belief and Student Success
[social_share/] [social-bio] I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of not performing to our potential at given points in our life due to anxiety, illness, the physical environment or just because we were having an off day. The importance of context on our ability to perform should not be underestimated. One factor that can greatly impact our ability to perform is our belief that we can achieve what we want to in a given context. If we believe we can do something we are far more likely to succeed. It could be argued that believing we can do something is simply a matter of knowing ones own strengths and weaknesses. …
- Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies, Program Evaluation, SoTL
Being More Efficient
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler “efficient |iˈfiSHənt| adjective (esp. of a system or machine) achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense (of a person) working in a well-organized and competent way [ in combination ] preventing the wasteful use of a particular resource” –(New Oxford American Dictionary”, 3rd Edition, 2010, Oxford University Press) Efficiency focuses on the level of relevant output achieved relative to the amount of effort. Perhaps it is like the phrase “Work better, not harder” or “lift smarter, not harder”. So what does being efficient mean for teaching? What does being efficient mean for curriculum renewal? Set your goals: Focus energy on the…
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Assessment For Learning
[social-bio] “Students can, with difficulty, escape from the effects of poor teaching, they cannot (by definition if they want to graduate) escape the effects of poor assessment.” (Boud, 1998) Think back to your experience as an undergraduate. How did you decide what to focus on in the hours outside the classroom? What drove your priorities in selecting what work to dedicate time to? If you were anything like me your decisions were driven by what you thought would get you a good grade. Don’t get me wrong, I was there to learn and was passionate about the subject I was studying. But I was also practical. I had limited time…