one needs a strong and charismatic leader
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Instructional Strategies for Online Courses - 0 views
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This website gives an overview of several instructional strategies recommended by the Illinois Online Network. They are good ideas but very broad in the explanation. Very much an overview.
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7 Secrets to Effective Online Collaboration - 0 views
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be devoted to the idea, product or project, and committed to one another’s success
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At times, however, you have no choice about your team. Those are the times that collaboration becomes very challenging and the position of the team leader becomes a dance.
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Articles
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Just getting some ideas for organizing and planning my independent project: Vyew.
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Rubric for Online Instruction - 0 views
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This is a rubric that covers a lot of the areas in summation that we learned about in the Moodle Course.
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ollie_4: Article: Attributes from Effective Formative Assessment (CCSSO) - 1 views
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there are a number of formative assessment strategies that can be implemented during classroom instruction.
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I know that it is too late to change the word "assessment" with formative (and I don't know what I would put in its place), but assessment is so tied to grading in everyone's mind. Formative assessment is not a grade or a "final" of anything. FA strategies help us accumulate data to find where student learning is and how teaching should address the next step toward the learning goal. SP -
Great point, Susie! Maybe we could start a movement against the word "assessment' after formative. :) -
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As an "old dog" I try to model learning "new tricks" which includes new understandings. Process is more of a stretch to the teachers I work with than assessment--they are slow to recognize how important process is, and impatient with assessing it.
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Students then need time to reflect on the feedback they have received to make changes or improvements. In addition, students can be encouraged to be self-reflective by thinking about their own work based on what they learned from giving feedback to others.
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Giving students time to reflect and engage in the metacognition act is so important. Too many times, instructors rush from one assessment to the next instead of letting students build a piece and reconstruct it over and over, based on feedback and reflection -- deep learning can occur if we let it.
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Thanks for the reminder. As you have taught me - reflection is important for students of any age!
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Teachers have to get over "covering" the material in order to allow themselves to give this reflection time. We need to learn this too.
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Effective formative assessment involves collecting evidence about how student learning is progressing during the course of instruction so that necessary instructional adjustments can be made to close the gap between students’ current understanding and the desired goals.
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I really like this definition of formative assessment - collecting evidence about student learning and then making adjustments to close the gap between current understanding and the desired goal. This is what I believe good teaching and learning is all about!
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I can already see that this article will be useful to me in working with our data teams this year.
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Descriptive feedback should be about the particular qualities of student learning with discussion or suggestions about what the student can do to improve.
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I agree with this statement. In my opinion, traditional grades do not provide the level of feedback a student needs to make improvements in their skills and knowledge. With descriptive feedback around the learning goals - the students understand where they are and what the target is.
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Learning progressions describe how concepts and skills build in a domain, and show the trajectory of learning along which students are expected to progress. From a learning progression teachers have the big picture of what students need to learn, as well as sufficient detail for planning instruction to meet short-term goals. They are able to connect formative assessment opportunities to the short-term goals to keep track of how well their students’ learning is moving forward.
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Our school is working on this and I believe we're doing an excellent job with posting/explaining our "learning targets" everyday. It is an excellent way to keep teachers and students focused on its learning goals. There is still more to apply and tweak but this is where I feel very confident about in my teaching.
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This information should be communicated using language readily understood by students, and may be accompanied by realistic examples of those that meet and do not meet the criteria.
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The criteria teachers must apply for formative assessment first needs to come from national/district standards, then broken down into unit goals, then down again into daily goals, then written so that students can understand them! Whew. That's why this is something to keep striving for!
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Helping students think meta-cognitively about their own learning fosters the idea that learning is their responsibility and that they can take an active role in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own progress.
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Some high school students can burned out if they are asked to constantly think about what they are learning. What has worked has been to check with them periodically or with a performance assessment to check how they are doing with their learning. Maybe if they were "trained" earlier, they would be more receptive more often.
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We were talking about the large number of high school students who need help in connection with RTI last week. The position of our curriculum person is that it will take awhile to have realistic numbers of students for level 3 interventions at the high school level. We are dealing with what we can, but need to wait for future students to get realistic numbers.
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Formative assessment is not an adjunct to teaching but, rather, integrated into instruction
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The hard part is the integration. Maybe it is hard because teachers still are deciding whether or not they value this.
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involve both teachers and student
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share learning goals with students and provide opportunities for students to monitor their ongoing progress.
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teachers must provide the criteria by which learning will be assessed so that students will know whether they are successfully progressing toward the goal
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In self-assessment, students reflect on and monitor their learning using clearly explicated criteria for success. In peer-assessment, students analyze each others’ work using guidelines or rubrics and provide descriptive feedback that supports continued improvement.
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partners in learning
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for students to be actively and successfully involved in their own learning, they must feel that they are bona fide partners in the learning process.
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Cybraryman Catalogue of Educational WebSites - Educational Web sites for Teachers, Educ... - 0 views
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Internet catalog for students, teachers, parents, and admins. Over 20,000 links broken down by subject.
Bloomin' Apps - Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything - 0 views
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How Can We Make Assessments Meaningful? | Edutopia - 0 views
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When I think about my own definition of a "meaningful assessment," I think the test must meet certain requirements. The assessment must have value other than "because it's on the test." It has value to the individual student who is taking it. It must intend to impact the world beyond the student "self," whether it is on the school site, the outlying community, the state, country, world, etc. And finally, the assessment should incorporate skills that students need for their future. That is, the test must assess skills other than the mere content. It must also test how eloquent the students communicate their content
iCivics - 0 views
Time Maps - 0 views
Google Lit Trips - 0 views
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Teacher Seeds - 0 views
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lots of Microsoft related links for backgrounds, sounds, games, animation, etc.
How to Create Your Own Online Course: 100 Tools, Guides, and Resources | Best Universities - 3 views
Quality Rubrics / Home - 4 views
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ollie4_1: Educational Leadership: The Quest for Quality - 1 views
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students can use the results to self-assess and set goals
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This is an important part of making students responsible for their own learning (in my opinion). -
I agree! I feel it is so important for us to givve students continued opportunities to learn and meet learning targets.
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But NCLB has exposed students to an unprecedented overflow of testing. In response to the accountability movement, schools have added new levels of testing that include benchmark, interim, and common assessments. Using data from these assessments, schools now make decisions about individual students, groups of students, instructional programs, resource allocation, and more. We're betting that the instructional hours sacrificed to testing will return dividends in the form of better instructional decisions and improved high-stakes test scores.
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I agree that often we as teachers get "hung-up" on completing all the district and state requirements for assessment reporting that sometimes we lose focus on what is really important. One thing that has been most helpful to our building is having a common vision with our Course Level Expectations clearly identified and a plan for how to get there including both formative and summative assessments along with differentiated instruction for getting there. It is not perfect but the planning, processing and implementing has been effective -
I would agree that having a common vision does help this process, especially for larger schools. We went through that fight several years ago in getting all the elementary teachers in the different buildings to meet the same expectations for certain subject areas. How has the Iowa Core changed your course level expectations or have you got there yet?
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Clear Learning TargetsThe assessor needs to have a clear picture of what achievement he or she intends to measure. If we don't begin with clear statements of the intended learning—clear and understandable to everyone, including students—we won't end up with sound assessments
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This article really gets at the heart of how important it is to have "focus lessons" both daily and longer term so that teacher and students know the learning targets.
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I think this is not only one of the keys to effective assessment, but it is also one that many teachers struggle with. I have seen many teachers who asssess because it is Friday or it is the end of the chapter and they have a certain number of questions because that is what they had on the last test. These and many other very unsound reasons for testing when and how we do are common among teachers. Let's face it, making really good assessments is very challenging and often very time consuming. -
I don't think that individual teachers are the only people guilty of this. When NCLB was enacted. many of the assessments used for measuring proficiency were designed for completely different purposes and were thus not sound proficiency assessments. I am eager to see the new Smarter Balanced Assessments and the new Iowa Assessments to see the changes that have been made.
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At the level of ongoing classroom assessments, formative applications involve what students have mastered and what they still need to learn. At the level of periodic interim/benchmark assessments, they involve which standards students are not mastering and where teachers can improve instruction right away. At the level of annual state/district standardized assessments, they involve where and how teachers can improve instruction—next year.
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We spent some PD time last year studying formative assessments, but didn't really go far enough to see how they fit into a whole balanced system of assessment. I like this description of how a balanced assessment system should work. It makes more sense to me now than it was before.
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A grade of D+, on the other hand, may be sufficient to inform a decision about a student's athletic eligibility, but it is not capable of informing the student about the next steps in learning.
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I don't think I have done a good job of having my assessments inform the student about the next steps in learning. I hadn't even really thought about the next steps until taking this class. As I've thought about it, I think I've done a better job with this step in terms of formative assessment, but not with summative assessment.
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Students learn best when they monitor and take responsibility for their own learning. This means that teachers need to write learning targets in terms that students will understand.
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We were discussing writing rubrics in student language last week. Students need to understand not only what they are being assessed on but why. -
This has been a point of emphasis our PD for the last several years. Starting with the learning targets and posting them so students can have a way the focus on finding the important material during instruciton and practice.
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Specific, descriptive feedback linked to the targets of instruction and arising from the assessment items or rubrics communicates to students in ways that enable them to immediately take action, thereby promoting further learning.
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I studied formative assessment in professional development in our district this year. The purpose of the assessment is "specific, descriptive feedback" so students can learn.
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this also should allow for opportunities to revise work - or prove in other ways - that they have, in fact, met the learning target.
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Some of the assignments that I have learned the most from are ones that I have had descriptive feedback on, and the ability to go back and correct my mistakes. The feedback in and of itself become an additional lesson.
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assessor has translated the learning targets into assessments that will yield accurate results.
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when assessing student learning, teacher must always take in to consideration the BEST way to have studnets show that they have met the learning target. Multiple choice & true false tests are not always the answer.
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Ongoing classroom assessments serve both formative and summative purposes and meet students' as well as teachers' information needs
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I think that often teachers fail to think about both groups when designing assessments and using results. Oftentimes I think that teachers use the results to adapt their instruction, but fail to provide the student with the information necessary to adapt their learning.
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Although it may seem as though having more assessments will mean we are more accurately estimating student achievement, the use of multiple measures does not, by itself, translate into high-quality evidence.
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This statement couldn't be more true. I think that people assume that all assessments are created equal and that just because you have gathered data means that the data is relevant and measuring what you want in to measure. This is not always the case, but people get distracted by numbers and forget that even though it is a number, it is still open for interpretation and analysis.
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I agree often there is not enough consideration if the data collected is the "right" data needed to inform important decisions.
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Bias can also creep into assessments and erode accurate results. Examples of bias include poorly printed test forms, noise distractions, vague directions, and cultural insensitivity.
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I think the hardest thing about testing bias is realizing it is a problem. Typically it creeps in when you aren't aware. Bias will often enter a question out of ignorance rather than intention.
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The goal of a balanced assessment system is to ensure that all assessment users have access to the data they want when they need it, which in turn directly serves the effective use of multiple measures.
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It is critical that people have access to the right data "when" it is needed to make important decisions.
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Who will use the results to inform what decisions?
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have considered questioning the accuracy of
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Quality Rubrics / Tools for Writing Rubrics - 3 views
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A variety of rubrics to help us build in the text, but check out the resources on the right side, as well. Hundreds of rubrics.
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Online Testing: Best Practices from the Field - 0 views
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Traditional approaches to testing don't work well online. A new mindset is needed. That's not bad; most education experts agree that rote memory testing is not the best measure of learning in any environment.
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ollie1christensen: Iowa Online Course Standards - 0 views
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course provider in most cases, not the course instructor or course creator
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I've taught primarily in the high school setting, with a few summers of adjuncting in a small college, so this differentiation between instructor, creator, and provider struck me as very interesting. I've always been both instructor and creator; I've also felt that the "provider" (the schools I've taught within) gave me as "instructor/creator" a great deal of freedom. It seems though, that with online courses, these three roles could easily be assumed by three different people. Communication and interaction between these three roles would be perhaps even more important! -
But am reading this wrong or do I not understand it well, because I think the provider would be the school or institution giving the credit: high school, college, university, elementary school. Doesn't the CP designation identify the requirements of the institution to provide legitimate and exemplary online instruction?
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The "Learner Objectives" are similar to what would be expected in any class: online or otherwise. And are vital to ensuring quality instruction.
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(K-12) • Information literacy and communication skills are incorporated and taught as an integral part of the curriculum.
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The inclusion of the online literacy skills, especially use of technology is a tricky one. One of the admonitions that we face as educators is the reminder that, for example, in an English literature course how much of my instruction should be on the application of a software program or online tool? Should any of my instruction time be taken up with instruction on those 21st century technology components or should it only be used in an English literature classroom IF the student know how to use it and no class/instructional time needs to be used up on the technical aspect of a project or learning demonstration?
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All resources and materials used in the course are appropriately cited and obey copyright and fair use.
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Information is provided to students, parents and mentors
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This new learning opportunity MUST include the method of informing and including all major educational stakeholders.
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timely and frequent feedback about student progress based on the learning targets
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foster mastery and application of the material and a plan for monitoring that interaction.
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Student evaluation strategies are aligned with course goals and objectives, representative of the scope of the course and clearly stated.
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Specific and descriptive criteria, including rubrics,
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Ongoing and frequent assessments
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Inclusion of many opportunities for formative assessment of the student's understanding and abilities as well as clearly coordinated summative assessments is vital!
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