Assessment Methods and Techniques: Analyzing Course Readings

Opportunity to Engage with Course Process Work

Details Why? This assignment is intended to provide students with the opportunity to: engage with the process work of the course, conducting course readings each week and coming prepared to discuss them; understand the approaches to learning that underlie assessment methods and techniques; connect current theory and practice to further assessment for learning; conduct an in-depth analysis of two course readings; present textual analysis to classmates; lead classmates through a focused and guided discussion centering on course readings; and ask questions of and critique their understandings of assessment, in collaboration with peers. This assignment serves as the process work of the class. Course readings are one of the main sources of “content” for the course. They have been curated to help you develop an understanding of each of the daily course themes. Students are expected to come to class each week having completed the readings, which will serve as the foundation for small group discussions.  What? You will be placed in groups of five. These groups will serve as your reading and discussion groups. Each of the five classes (listed below) you will meet with your discussion group. You will be allotted 30 minutes for this discussion. Before our first synchronous meeting, you will decide who will serve as a discussion lead for each of these five sessions. There are two portions to this assignment: Discussion Lead  The class you are discussion lead, you should plan to spend about 10 minutes leading the group through a summary of the text, drawing out key points from the text and their implications for educational assessment. In the remaining 20 minutes, you should guide the class through a discussion of the reading based on five questions you have devised. For at least one of these questions, please draw your classmate’s attention to a passage in the text and discuss it in further detail. Overall, the questions should be focused explicitly on the content of the text, with connections to other texts, and their implications for assessment. Here is an example of five strong questions, written by a student previously enrolled in this class, about an article by Volante and Jaafar: Looking at the table on page 204, what does this data tell us about standardized assessments?  On page six of the text, Volante and Jaafar (2010) say, “This lack of attention to the factors that influence student performance, such as socio-economic status, has spurred inappropriate test preparation practices (i.e., teaching to the test) in various Canadian schools”. With this in mind, what are some ways that we could be mindful of test preparation  in our future classrooms?  Recall our discussion of rubrics from several weeks ago. How do standardized assessments and rubrics compare? Volante and Jaafar discuss LSAs (Large-Scale Assessments) a lot throughout their text, whereas Westheimer addresses the harm of teaching to the test. What would it mean for Canadian classrooms if there were not national or international LSAs? Thinking back to the principles that underlie assessment discussed in week five, what principle does standardized testing align with? Does it adhere to or diverge from the principle you would like to adopt in your classroom? Please steer away from questions about peers’ opinions, as well as your own experiences as a student.  Your job for the discussion is also to practice the important skill of guiding peers (or thinking more broadly, your future students) through a discussion. The role of the facilitator is to keep the conversation going, to invite people into the conversation (e.g. Jason, we haven’t heard much from you yet, what do you think about the critique Amy offered?”), and to make sure people do not take up too much space (“Frankie, I appreciate you jumping in here, but we’ve heard from you twice, and not yet from Mary. Can we pause here, what you are saying, so that Mary might have the chance to offer something.”) This latter requirement may be difficult, but is part of the responsibility of educators, both to help people realize how much space they are taking up, and to create an environment where everyone feels as though they have space to participate.