Assessment for Learning

This was the main theme for the Cambridge Internationl Examination Teachers' Conference last week. We were exposed to mainly:
1) The 4 key tools of AFL
2) The effectiveness of AFL in several case studies
3) i-Net

I'm putting this down in the way/pattern/vocabulary that I have understood and learnt from the conference so that it can be shared with others who are interested.

When a student learn, there are three phases that he/she will go through:
1. Engagement (What do we know already? What do we want and need to find out?)
2. Exploration and transformation(How will we go about finding out?)
3. Presentation and reflection (How will we know, and show, that we've found out when we've finished? Where next?)
Therefore, when we plan a lesson, we plan it such that they will go through these three phases. A lesson plan should have three ingredients: objectives, learning activities and assessment.

Assessment is not new to us (lecturers). The article in http://www.edsnet.na/Resources/TBCM/TBCM4/page1.htm gives a very simple yet clear description about what is continuous assessment, which includes (1) observation, (2) informal continuous assessment, (3) formal continuous assesment and (4) formal assessment.

In this conference, we focused on how to use 'summative' assessment not as an end to student's performance, but as a 'tool' to help the students to improve, by showing them three things:
a) where they are now
b) how they can improve
c) where they need to go/ success criteria

They believe that increasing the assessment quality will increase the standard of learning.

1) The 4 key tools in AFL:
i) Sharing learning intention & success criteria
- since the way of learning is by constructing knowledge from the existing knowledge, its good for the students (& lecturers) to know:
a) what I already know
b) what I want to know
c) what I need to know (the learning outcome/ syllabus)
d) why I need to know
The possible goal orientations are:
- exam performance
- mastery of skills
- learning - of attitudes, disposition, skills of learning how to learn

ii) classroom talk/ discussion/ questioning technique
Two things:
a) Lecturers' questioning technique - ask more open ended questions to provide opportunity for the students to think, which is a higher order learning/thinking in Bloom's taxonomy (www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
www.teachers.ash.org.au/researchskills/dalton.htm)
A good approach that promotes learning is when the challenge is high and the skills of the student is high too.
-Some ideas for questioning:
- key word games
- 'hot seat' questioning
- ' no hands up'
- increase wait time (at least 3 seconds)
- concept mapping
- 'post-it note' game
(I have still to work out what some of these are!!)
b) Class activity of talking/ discussion in pairs, in four or in a group - has been shown by numerous researches that it can help students to learn better. (I will add in the quantitative findings here when i have time)

iii) Feedback - contructive feedback either written or orally
The quality of the feedback is important to determine whether it is helpful or demotivating. There are two main things a feedback can refer to:
a) effort
b) achievement
Some quality of a good feedback:
- explicit reference to criteria/goal
- comment-only marking (no grade given as it demotivates weaker students and doesn't show where and how they can improve)
- focused marking (???)
- suggesions on how to improve
-re-timing assessment - give it at an early stage and continuously so as to intervene and give time for improvement to be made by the student.

iv) Peer & self-assessment (for students)
This can help students to find out three things that I have mentioned earlier:
1) What they already know?
2) What they need to know/ what standard of quality is required?
3) How they can get there?

Four practical strategies suggested in the conference are:
1) students' self/ peer assessment:
a) using mark scheme
b) using criteria (e.g. an outline of the 'look for' when the examinar marks an assignment')
c) using examplars (e.g. 'A' vs 'B' vs 'C' grade answer/ drawings)
2) identify group weakness
3) self assessment of confidence level regarding a topic using:
a) traffic lights card
b) smiley face card
c) 'post it' notes
4) End of lesson students' review

In short, assessment is part of our lesson plan. We can use it to help the students to learn and to improve. So we should do a continuous assessment, either daily, weekly or every two to three weeks, and start it off early for intervention. The methods we can use include (1) sharing intention and success criteria, (2) classroom talk/ discussion & questioning, (3) Constructive feedback, (4) peer & self-assessment.

Graduation Ceremony in Perth

This is my uni. logo
My classmates at the main campus
Omg, this is my uni? Very classical architecture. So beautiful !!
This is our most respectable Prof.'s/ supervisor's room!! (But he was not in)
Tickets to the ceremony
These are my classmates - Subra, Winnie, Poh Chin, Prema, Sow
Fong, Chin Poh Choo (and the last guy did the course full time in the main campus)
You must be wondering where am I...arha, I didn't go. Look whose in red...our most respectable Dr. Elaine Chapman and Prof. Tom 'O' Donoghue
Hmm...now I know, my Graduate School of Education looks like this.
The other two lecturers...who (L centre) and Prof Marnie (R centre)
A toss for completing the 2 years of hard work on assignments and night classes...

OO...seeing these pictures, I am envy...but so lazy to go all the way there just to collect the scroll, after all , I have been to Perth and have also graduated in Master before.
Hurray!! More envy...@@ Nvm, save $$ to go to NZ!!
Aren't they cute?