Group items tagged

Assessment as learning: where students develop an awareness of how they learn and use that awareness to adjust and advance their learning, taking an increased responsibility for their learning.

"In general, there are more and more systematic studies of behavior and performance that are minimally disruptive to the informal activity but also allow for documentation of what kinds of participation occur and capacities get put to use in a learning environment, and also what types of choices follow from experience. Ethnography can be used to demonstrate how a type of learning environment or system works, what kinds of outcomes follow from participation. "

'In the analysis presented in this article, it has been argued that the problem lies less with the quality of feedback than with the fundamental assumption that telling, even detailed telling, is an effective approach to complex learning. Because feedback is commonly expressed in verbal form, learning from being told is flawed as a general strategy because the conditions for the statements to make intimate connection with the student work (with a view to future work) are frequently not satisfied. Assuming that low student dispositions to learn is not the reason for their failure to capitalise on learning opportunities, the issue is how to create a different learning environment that works effectively. A proposed alternative to the usual sequence of [task - response - appraisal - feedback] is to make intensive use of purposeful peer assessment as a pedagogical strategy, not just for assessment but for substantive aspects of the course as well. Students need to grasp three groups of concepts in particular - response genre, quality, and criteria - if interactions between teachers and learners are to be formatively effective, and capability in complex appraisal is to be developed. These assessment concepts must be understood not as abstractions but as core concepts that are internalised, operationalised and applied to concrete productions. Unless this occurs, the key assessment concepts are likely to remain submerged and invisible.'

Slavin, Hurley, and Chamberlain (2003) have shown that activating students as learning resources for one another produces some of the largest gains seen in any educational interventions, provided two conditions are met. The first is that the learning environment must provide for group goals, so that students are working as a group instead of just working in a group. The second condition is individual accountability, so that each student is responsible for his or her contribution to the group, so there can be no "passengers."

"The teams meet regularly and each team member is on the "hot seat" - no one is immune from the clinical exercise."