Into the Driver's Seat

Looking for tools and strategies for effective assessment in project-based learning? To support you, we've assembled this guide to helpful resources from Edutopia and beyond.

A higher-order thinker is a critical thinker. What are the attributes of a critical thinker? In The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, Richard Paul and Linda Elder describe a well-cultivated critical thinker as someone who:

1. raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
2. gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively; 
3. comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
4. thinks open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing their assumptions, implications and practical consequences as need be; and
5. communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.

Explore the benefits of incorporating audio feedback to build stronger instructor-learner connections. Discover free audio tools that quickly record comments-- often in less time than it takes to write them. 

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"Google has funded an associate professor in the Indiana University School of Education to develop a "Big Open Online Course," or BOOC. Daniel Hickey will offer a free course in September focused on educators and titled "Assessment Practices, Principles and Policies" for as many as 500 students, funded by a $50,000 Google grant.

"Hickey intends for this BOOC to offer most of the advantages of a Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, but with more interaction, while taking advantage of Google's new Coursebuilder course management system. "Google wants to know whether interactive online practices that are working well with 20 students can be scaled up," Hickey said.

 

"Students who complete the BOOC will learn the practical skills needed to improve classroom student assessments while exploring assessment principles and new accountability policies. These topics are becoming more important to educators as states introduce new curriculum standards and achievement tests, while at the same time beginning to evaluate teachers according to short-term gains on those tests. Students who wish to take the course for graduate-level credit will be able to do so by completing additional course requirements, including a term paper based on the weekly assignments".

by Vicki Davis

 

"I think the problem with rigor is that some are trying to assess it in too short of a time. Turning back to the Teach Like a Pirate book by Dave, he mentions that someone came in to assess his “rigor” by spending 10 minutes in his room. They came in when he was folding cranes at the end of a powerful lesson about Hiroshima. Hearing him describe the full lesson - it was a perfect ending that the kids will never forget.

"This person sent to “assess rigor” spent 10 minutes in his room and left after commenting to a student or two that “this doesn’t look like history.” I would argue that teacher assessment teams must be held to the same rigor as a classroom teacher!"

After a decade of rapid expansion in Australian higher education, student numbers have grown considerably in many courses and subjects, especially at the undergraduate level.

Larger class sizes pose significant teaching challenges, not least in the assessment of student learning. Perhaps most troubling, large classes may limit the amount of feedback provided to students.

"It is a myth that all it takes to write is to sit down in front of a blank page, to begin at the beginning and write through to the end, with no planning, break, editing, or changes in between. And yet, this is sometimes what we ask our students to do. Good writers plan and revise, rearrange and delete text, re-reading and producing multiple drafts before they produce their finished document. This is what a process writing approach is about."