John Eklund (j.eklund@uts.edu.au)
Thu, 5 Nov 1998 21:36:28 +0500
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 21:36:28 +0500 From: j.eklund@uts.edu.au (John Eklund) Subject: [ifets] assessment issues
Hello,
I think we should be reminded that assessment via testing is just one form
of profiling a student, and that these 'new' problems of uneven partners in
collaborative assessment, cheating on declarative knowledge tests and so
forth have always been with us, even before computers or online ed. I
couldn't count how many formulas I've seen written on the inside calculator
covers! I've used automarked multi-choice tests in TopClass to assess
low-level knowledge, and they are useful mainly to the student to
self-assess their progress. I had 10 questions for each of 10 weeks with
only a 20% weighting, and that's low enough to make it not worthwhile to
copy answers from each other. Many of the better students like to keep
their answers to themselves anyway: they get annoyed when others don't come
to class, or don't contribute to the class, or don't pull their weight in a
group assessment item. But the kinds of understandings I want to assess are
those where knowledge is applied to new situations, where opinions of
others are integrated with their own to create new ideas, or new skills are
applied to solve problems in innovative ways. I find this is best done by
individual project or essay (often through learning contract), and by
discussions. I've tried having the online discussions as assessment
components too, and I believe it's a good approach, and one where an
individual's work can easily be seen, but it is a bit difficult to assign a
worth to a posting or to a series of them. I would be interested to hear if
and how others use online discussions in their assessment, and more
generally if they find the quality of the discussions is better than in a
face to face situation.
Regards,
John
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Eklund
Faculty of Education
The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) ,-_|\
PO Box 222, Lindfield NSW 2070 Australia / .au \
phone +61-2-98022029 (H) fax +61-2-95145556 \_,-._/<-Sydney
http://138.25.75.6/staff/john_eklund/ v
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://ifets.gmd.de/
Email address for sending message to everyone on the list ifets@gmd.de
Forum's contact person ifets-info@gmd.de
Join/Leave Digest or Normal List http://ifets.gmd.de/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu 05 Nov 1998 - 12:16:46 MET