Tools and Techniques in Assessment Course Information
EDUB 532 Tools and Techniques in Assessment
Course Description
This course examines assessment both in the context of educational decision making and as a tool for enabling students to gain an understanding of the meaning of academic success. The topic is presented with a balanced perspective that emphasizes that no single assessment methodology is inherently more or less appropriate. Candidates examine various types of assessments, including portfolios, and how they can be aligned with course objectives and instructional standards. They then construct assessments to demonstrate the knowledge they have gained. Candidates also examine issues related to standardized testing and methods for reporting student achievement.
Week 1
Lecture: Course Overview and Introduction
Lecture: Learning Targets
Outcomes
- The purposes of assessment
- The language of assessment
- The functions of assessment
- The purposes of learning targets
- How to unpack standards
Week 2
Lecture: Defining Student Expectations
Outcomes
- How teachers can use learning standards to set student expectations
- How student expectations differ for similar standards that traverse grade levels
- Why ensuring the teaching of all standards has become a challenge for teachers
Week 3
Lecture: Selecting Assessment Methods
Outcomes
- When to use constructed response assessments
- How to gather assessment in general ways
- How to gather assessment evidence in a variety of specific ways
Week 4
Lecture: Portfolios, Written, and Project Assessments
Lecture: Designing Quality Classroom Assessment Tasks
Outcomes
- How logs, journals, and notebooks are used in assessments
- How portfolios are used in assessments
- How projects are used in assessments
- When a task is an assessment
- How to design quality assessment tasks
- What the characteristics of quality assessment tasks are
Week 5
Lecture: Creating Useful Scoring Guides
Lecture: Tracking and Analyzing Results
Outcomes
- The advantages and disadvantages of rubrics
- The formats for rubrics
- How rubrics are designed
- How rubrics (themselves) can be assessed
- How assessment information can be used to make valid inferences when analyzing student learning
- How classroom assessment evidence data can be organized to create the valid inferences from multiple data sources
Week 6
Lecture: Revising Feedback and Instructional Plans
Lecture: Using Assessment to Motivate Students
Outcomes
- Why it is important to uncover teacher beliefs and examine current practice
- Which instructional strategies best fit particular learning targets
- What good feedback is and how it can improve instruction
- What differentiated instruction is and involves
- What research-based best practices of teaching are and how they can be translated into classroom instruction
- What motivation is
- How the concepts embodied within the Assessment Cycle enhance student motivation
- What process teachers can follow to address motivation needs
Week 7
Lecture: Rethinking Grading Practices
Lecture: Challenges of High-Stakes Assessment
Outcomes
- The history of grading practices
- The grading practices that are counterproductive
- The negative effects of grading
- The characteristics of a productive grading plan
- The purposes behind large-scale standardized testing
- The criticisms of large-scale standardized testing
- The strategies used by teachers and schools when faced with high-stakes tests that have an impact on student learning
Week 8
Lecture: Closing Thought
The course description, objectives and learning outcomes are subject to change without notice based on enhancements made to the course. October 2011
