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Nils Peterson

Focus on Formative Feedback - 0 views

  • This paper reviews the corpus of research on feedback, with a particular focus on formative feedback—defined as information communicated to the learner that is intended to modify the learner’s thinking or behavior for the purpose of improving learning. According to researchers in the area, formative feedback should be multidimensional, nonevaluative, supportive, timely, specific, credible, infrequent, and genuine (e.g., Brophy, 1981; Schwartz & White, 2000). Formative feedback is usually presented as information to a learner in response to some action on the learner’s part. It comes in a variety of types (e.g., verification of response accuracy, explanation of the correct answer, hints, worked examples) and can be administered at various times during the learning process (e.g., immediately following an answer, after some period of time has elapsed). Finally, there are a number of variables that have been shown to interact with formative feedback’s success at promoting learning (e.g., individual characteristics of the learner and aspects of the task). All of these issues will be discussed in this paper. This review concludes with a set of guidelines for generating formative feedback.
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    Educational Testing Service website hosting a literature review ca 2007 on formative feedback. First 10 pages made it look promising enough to Diigo
Joshua Yeidel

A Measure of Learning Is Put to the Test - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

  • "The CLA is really an authentic assessment process,"
    • Joshua Yeidel
       
      What is the meaning of "authentic" in this statement? It certainly isn't "situated in the real world" or "of intrinsic value".
  • it measures analytical ability, problem-solving ability, critical thinking, and communication.
  • the CLA typically reports scores on a "value added" basis, controlling for the scores that students earned on the SAT or ACT while in high school.
    • Joshua Yeidel
       
      If SAT and ACT are measuring the same things as CLA, then why not just use them? If they are measuring different things, why "control for" their scores?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • improved models of instruction.
  • add CLA-style assignments to their liberal-arts courses.
    • Joshua Yeidel
       
      Maybe the best way to prepare for the test, but the best way to develop analytical ability, et. al.?
  • "If a college pays attention to learning and helps students develop their skills—whether they do that by participating in our programs or by doing things on their own—they probably should do better on the CLA,"
    • Joshua Yeidel
       
      Just in case anyone missed the message: pay attention to learning, and you'll _probably_ do better on the CLA. Get students to practice CLA tasks, and you _will_ do better on the CLA.
  • "Standardized tests of generic skills—I'm not talking about testing in the major—are so much a measure of what students bring to college with them that there is very little variance left out of which we might tease the effects of college," says Ms. Banta, who is a longtime critic of the CLA. "There's just not enough variance there to make comparative judgments about the comparative quality of institutions."
    • Joshua Yeidel
       
      It's not clear what "standardized tests" means in this comment. Does the "lack of variance" apply to all assessments (including, e.g., e-portfolios)?
  • Can the CLA fill both of those roles?
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    A summary of the current state of "thinking" with regard to CLA. Many fallacies and contradictions are (unintentionally) exposed. At least CLA appears to be more about skills than content (though the question of how it is graded isn't even raised), but the "performance task" approach is the smallest possible step in that direction.
Corinna Lo

YouTube - Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web of open, linked data - 0 views

shared by Corinna Lo on 14 Mar 09 - Cached
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    Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.
S Spaeth

Matthews et al: Selecting influential members of social networks - 0 views

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    Opinion leaders are influential members of their social networks, strategically selected for their ability to sway community norms. The aims of the study were to assess: 1) whether it is feasible to identify student opinion leaders (SOLs) and their social networks among Grade 11 students at two high schools in Cape Town, South Africa; and 2) whether these opinion leaders would be willing to be involved in an HIV/AIDS prevention program in their school. The students (N = 412) completed a semi-structured, anonymous, self-administered questionnaire. ... Of these, all but two at each school were willing and available to participate in a HIV/AIDS prevention program. ---------- Focuses on HIV/AIDS prevention but can we use principles in other contexts and Facebook recommendation tools to support the process?
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    I've been thinking about how to support the development and visibility of SOLs using technology, without creating a creepy treehouse. How do we make them more visible and accessible?
Theron DesRosier

ePortfolios, the Harvesting Gradebook, Accountability, and Community | Penn State Learn... - 0 views

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    Penn State Learning Design Hub Link to the Harvesting Gradebook.
S Spaeth

MIT Press Journals - International Journal of Learning and Media - Full Text - 0 views

  • Howard GardnerHobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  • As shown in table 1, we will be cognizant throughout of who the learners are, where they learn, how they learn, what are the principal curricula, and how competences are purveyed via the media of the time. The grid itself contains generalizations about the past and present, and speculation about the future, thus providing a broad portrait of changes over time. While we do not discuss each entry in the grid, we hope that it aids in thinking about learning in formal and informal settings.
  • Uniform schooling reflects both fairness and efficiency. It appears fair to treat all children in the same way; and it is also efficient, given classes of 20, 30, or even 60 charges in one room, sometimes arrayed by age, sometimes decidedly heterogeneous in composition.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • It would be an exaggeration to claim that formal education takes place without attention to what has been learned about the processes of successful learning, such as insights into student motivation, study habits, strategies, metacognition, and other approaches obtained from experience, or, more recently and systematically, from the psychological and cognitive sciences. But it would probably be accurate to say that such accumulated knowledge is used only spottily and sporadically in most parts of the world. Education—teaching and learning—changes very slowly.
  • Yet, nowhere are these ideas dominant. Indeed, until today, one might say that the European classroom models of the 19th century continue to hold sway: Teachers give out information, students are expected to master it with little help, and the awards of the culture during the years of school go to those who can crack the various literate and disciplinary codes.
  • One strategy might involve formal education playing a role in informal learning spaces (perhaps on the analogy of teaching hospitals), and learners' out-of-school passions finding a validating place in formal educational arenas.
  • NDM's vast resources, including the provision of many activities in which the user assumes a formative role, can complement constructivist approaches to education. As noted above, a motivated learner can investigate a wide variety of personal interests on his or her own.
  • At this point in time, deeply constructivist classrooms remain few and far between despite evidence that hands-on, problem-solving approaches in the classroom result in higher levels of student engagement, conceptual thinking, knowledge transfer, and retention (Scardamalia, Bereiter, and Lamon 1994; Bransford et al. 1999; Hmelo-Silver 2004; Meier 1995; Project Zero and Reggio Children 2001; Sizer 1984). But in an environment of “No Child Left Behind” and standardized tests linked to federal funding, the implementation of constructivist principles in the classroom can be considered a risky enterprise for public schools.
  • A web-based project at MIT, for instance, paired French language students with peers in France learning to speak English, and provided students an authentic opportunity to practice their language skills, learn online communication skills, and negotiate the implicit guidelines of a different culture (Cultura 2007).
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    In this article we argue that, after millennia of considering education (learning and teaching) chiefly in one way, we may well have reached a set of tipping points: Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before. This constitutes a paradox: As the digital era progresses, learning may be at once more individual (contoured to a person's own style, proclivities, and interests) yet more social (involving networking, group work, the wisdom of crowds, etc.). How these seemingly contradictory directions are addressed impacts the future complexion of learning.
Gary Brown

The Ticker - Most Colleges Try to Assess Student Learning, Survey Finds - The Chronicle... - 0 views

  • October 26, 2009, 02:53 PM ET Most Colleges Try to Assess Student Learning, Survey Finds A large majority of American colleges make at least some formal effort to assess their students' learning, but most have few or no staff members dedicated to doing so. Those are among the findings of a survey report released Monday by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, a year-old project based at Indiana University and the University of Illinois. Of more than 1,500 provosts' offices that responded to the survey, nearly two-thirds said their institutions had two or fewer employees assigned to student assessment. Among large research universities, almost 80 percent cited a lack of faculty engagement as the most serious barrier to student-assessment projects.
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    no news here, but it does suggest the commitment our unit represents.
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