Course Contents

UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT: CONCEPTS AND CONTEXT Overview of course and ideas • Overview of course • Revisit Assessment practices in schools in Pakistan • Personal experience with tests in school • The distinction between assessment of learning and assessment for learning • Review of research on the positive effects of continuous assessment • Possible causes of those effects: motivation; feelings toward self; improved instruction Review of research on the effects of a teacher’s feedback on learning Assessment concepts and underpinnings • Curriculum: goals, objectives, standards, targets • Pakistan National Curriculum (2006-2007): standards, benchmarks, learning outcomes • Formative and summative Assessments • Distinguishing between the two through real examples • Assessments concepts: The relationship between reliability and validity Cultures of testing and assessment • Shift from a culture of testing in schools to a culture of assessment • Assessment practices and policies in elementary schools in Pakistan • How might the culture of classrooms change if formative assessment becomes a routine part of instruction? How might the roles of teachers and learners change? Might this pose challenges? UNIT 2: ASSESSMENT IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN TEACHING AND LEARNING Constructing the Unit upon which the test will be based • Study the subject textbooks to select the unit and determine the subject and topic for your unit with partner(s) • Outline the content for your unit with your partner(s) • Check your content outline with the National Curriculum content for your subject, topic and grade level • Write the first lesson for your unit with your partners • Groups exchange their unit , read each other’s lessons and give feedback • Write lessons 2 and 3 for your unit. Principles and rules for writing Selected-Response and Constructed-Response objective test questions • Study directions for and practice writing short answer and completion questions for your test( for the lessons that you have constructed) • Study directions for and practice writing true-false, alternate-choice and matching questions for your test( for the lessons that you have constructed ) • Study directions for and practice writing multiple choice items for your test( for the lessons that you have constructed ) Assembling your test • Writing and constructing answers to sentence completion and short answer questions • Writing and constructing answers to true-false, alternate-choice and matching questions • Writing and constructing answers to multiple questions • Writing directions for the test Assembling your test • Building a Table of Specifications I • Finishing a Table of Specifications II Checking for balance in the coverage of learning objectives • Determining the length of the test Essays - One way to assess complex learning and achievement • Forms and uses of essay questions • Restricted-Response essay questions • Extended-Response essay questions • Scoring rubrics for Restricted and Extended-Response essays Advantages and limitations of essays • Suggestions for constructing essays Making sense of the test items By now you and you and your partner(s) will have gained enough experience on how to write a good test and connect it with SLO’s. You can now analyze the type of test items that you see in textbooks for the same unit or a teacher made test. • Item analysis of the test. • Report on the results of the item analysis • Decide which items to eliminate/improve. • Research on students’ reactions to the kinds of tests that they are given by the teachers as a means of feedback on tests items . UNIT 3: INTEGRATING AND SHARING ASSESSMENT RESULTS Characteristics of effective and ineffective feedback • What is feedback? • What are some ways in which teachers provide conscious and unconscious feedback to students? How might these affect learning? • Conclusions from research on feedback in the classroom • Characteristics of effective feedback • Consequences for students from effective feedback on assessments • Examples of effective feedback • Characteristics of ineffective feedback • Examples of ineffective feedback • Guidelines for writing effective feedback • Ways to avoid ineffective feedback statements • The role of feedback in increasing students’ learning and confidence • Sharing assessment results with others • How might you provide feedback to a parent in a way that facilitates the environment of teaching and learning at home • Develop a mock parent teacher conference, keeping cultural considerations in mind. • Role-play various parent teacher conference scenarios Develop a mock teacher student session following points to be considered • Sharing assessment results with students • Integrate test performance with classroom performance. • Develop some feedback statements that you would give students on their assignments Practice - Feedback to students and assessment results to parents • Half the class presents their feedback. • Members of the class critique the feedback presentations • The other half of the class presents their feedback. • Members of the class critique the feedback presentations • Feedback Framework: Medal, Mission and Goals • review the feedback received in different courses against this framework UNIT 4: THE ARRAY OF AVAILABLE ASSESSMENT TASKS Informal Performance Assessment • Anecdotes in teacher journals. • Homework • Written work produced in class • Informal behavioral observation with check lists and rating scales • Class discussions. • Academic Tasks (Running Oral Reading Records, for example) Restricted and Extended Performance Assessment • Essays, Experiments, Projects, Demonstrations, Performances • The Best Apple: an example of a Restricted Performance Assessment • The Green Bean Race: an example of an Extended Performance • Rubrics • Learning objectives for Performance Assessments • Strengths and weaknesses of Performance Assessments Portfolios • Purpose of Portfolio Assessment • Supply content • Evaluation of Structure • Evaluation of Content • Illustrations of Portfolio Assessment: Your Semester 3 Student Teaching Portfolio Review • You know more about assessment now than you knew 15 weeks ago when you had the discussion about a shift from a culture of testing in schools to a culture of assessment. Go back to that discussion now. Do you believe such a cultural shift can take place in classrooms in Pakistan? How? • Though the topic was not covered in this course, there is some evidence that students earn higher scores on a test if they write test questions and answer them before taking the test prepared by the teacher. This is a good course in which to try this out. See if you can devise an assessment task for the course that you are taking and share it with your professor.

Course Synopsis

Historically, the practices of testing and teaching have been conducted separately. A shift in schools throughout the world from the practice of testing to the practice of assessment is an effort, in part, to integrate assessment and instruction. Experienced teachers know that when a lesson ends, the teacher does not know exactly what each student learned. (The fact that the teacher taught does not necessarily mean that the students learned.) The only way to know what the students actually learned is to check in some way (written quiz, homework assignment or, perhaps, oral questions from the teacher that individual students answer when called upon.) Fortunately, educational researchers, working in many countries throughout the world, have proven something that some teachers learned from experience. These researchers have shown time and again that students earn significantly higher scores on major tests when their teachers check for learning during and/or immediately after lessons than do similar students whose teachers do not check for learning while students are learning but wait until it is time for a major test. Checking for learning continuously rather than assuming it has occurred is the essence of several practices that educators call Classroom Assessment. The emphasis in this course is on interactions between instruction, assessment, and learning. The goal of the course is to persuade you that integrating assessment activities into lesson plans improves learning. You will practice writing assessment criteria and assessment methods into lesson plans. You will study and critique links between assessment and instruction. Assessment, done properly, is a continuous process. The information gathered is used to remove obstacles to learning, improve instruction, and enable students to progress to increasingly complex mental work. The teacher who is assessing learning uses a diverse array of methods, including tests. It is unlikely that a student enrolled in a class where the teacher understands the process of continuous assessment will sit in a classroom very long without learning. You will practice giving constructive feedback, a major component of assessment, to each other throughout the semester. You will learn about the steps involved in test construction and practice writing questions for classroom tests. You will have the opportunity to study and discuss different types of assessment methods. Throughout the course, you will be encouraged to think about and discuss your own beliefs and judgments about classroom assessment. By the end of the course, you should have a commitment to your own version of a philosophy of assessment in the classroom. This course is based on the belief that wise decisions are a teacher’s most important skill. Good assessments are at the core of wise decisions.

Course Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, you should be able to: • write a lesson plan that includes assessment targets, criteria for demonstrating success achieving the targets, and appropriate assessment tools • explain the purpose of a Table of Specifications for a test (test blueprint) to a colleague • show a colleague how to construct a Table of Specifications for a test • distinguish between good and weak short-answer, multiple-choice, true-false, and matching questions from an actual test and explain why each question is good or weak • identify the characteristics of effective feedback and provide an example • construct a rubric for a performance assessment task • defend, with conviction, the claim that reliable information from assessments about students’ learning status increases the effectiveness of instructional decisions