Module C went a bit differently than the previous two modules. First of all, the teacher changed, and secondly, the teaching practice started at the same time. I felt a little distracted when doing both things at the same time, as my focus switched to the teaching practice more and more in the course of Module C. I missed some contact days because of teaching practice and personal reasons. It was until then I noticed the importance of contact days with the nature of this program. We had individual tasks when we were apart, but contact days kept everything together and more logical. Missing contact days felt like missing some logic.
At the beginning of Module C, we were asked to write down our three learning objectives. Mine are:
- How to deal with diversity of students
- How to plan in a way that students will learn what we hope they'll learn (the alignment of "learning outcomes--> learning activities--> assessment")
- Classroom management
For the first and third objectives, I read two books on the topics.
And for the second one, the concept of constructively aligned designed was discussed extensively throughout the module. Our PBL (Problem-based learning) task had also touched upon this topic. Unfortunately, I did not participate the discussion session of PBL, but I went through the summaries of our fellow classmates and found some similarities and different angles of the topic. Some of our classmates questioned the learning task/question we came up with. It reminded me of my PBL observations earlier when the students were trying to decide the question for their task. I could see that the teacher tried very hard not to interrupt the discussion but in the end she had to interfere and lead them to the right direction. In spite of using the student-centered approach, as a facilitator in the PBL sessions, she not only had the expertise in the field but also the understanding of the students' capacity and learning trajectory.
We also did a micro-teaching session where we needed to make our own multi-media materials. I hadn't heard of Powtoon before but I was interested in testing it, so I decided to make one for the micro-teaching session, and it was really powerful! It requires some time to get familiar with the functions but it could be a nice tool for pretasks or self-learning materials.
To reflect on the five competences from the assessment table in Module C, I made the reflection into the mind map below and tried to connect the different tasks we had during the process. I found it the easiest with "Assessment and evaluation competences" and "Cultural competences." The others were somehow difficult to map into my learning, although I still found some connections.
Assessment: Five questions
To answer these questions, I consulted Alberto's very clear presentation for his reading club. The literature of the presentation was based on the following book:
Berry, R. (2008). Assessment for learning (Vol. 1). Hong Kong University Press.
Why to assess?
According to the book, there are three types of assessments and they are for different reasons: Assessment OF Learning, Assessment FOR Learning, Assessment AS Learning.
Assessment OF learning: Related to behaviorism, the goal is to see if the students have learned what was set to be learned. It is the assessment of the product of learning.
Assessment FOR learning: Related to constructivism, the purpose of the assessment is FOR learning, meaning that the assessment results can help understand the students' learning and enhance their further learning by making adjustments, etc. It is the assessment of the learning process.
Assessment AS learning: Students are the assessors in this case. They learn to monitor their own learning and thus become more autonomous. Assessment IS part of their learning.
Depending on the learning objectives, there might be different reasons and types of assessments. The important idea is to align the learning objectives to the assessments.
What to assess?
The assessment should be aligned with the learning objectives. They should be aligned at the same level. The content and criteria of the assessment should also be transparent and clear to the students so they know what to expect and what to aim for.
When to assess?
Again, depending on the purposes, assessments can be done before, during and after the learning activities. It can be in class or out of class. A diagnostic assessment can be done before the new learning activity to understand the students' current status; a formative assessment can be done during the process to improve their learning; and a summative assessment can be used at the end of the learning process.
How to assess?
There are many types of assessment. Of course there are the traditional assessment with multiple choice items, true or false, short answers, essays, etc. There are also alternative assessments such as portfolios, learning journals, projects, interviews, etc. In order to align with the learning objectives, the nature of the types of assessment should be considered when planning.
Who to do the assessing?
Teachers and students. Traditionally, assessment mostly involves teachers' effort, especially from a teacher-centered approach perspective. Since students should take responsibility in their own learning, self-assessment and peer-assessment are considered beneficial as well.
