Group items tagged

"In 1998, a National Science Foundation report made a remark that begins to hit the mark a little closer: "It is important to understand how individuals assess their own knowledge of these subjects. For many purposes … it is the individual's self-assessment of his or her knowledge that will either encourage or discourage a given behavior." This starts to tear down the wall of judging people based on how "well-informed" or "attentive" they are (terms that permeate these statistics reports) to science, and instead places more significance on an individual's assessment of themselves. To go further, I'd argue that "knowledge" isn't as telltale of a measurement as "experience"."

A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills -- Jon Mueller "...Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field." -- Grant Wiggins -- (Wiggins, 1993, p. 229). "Performance assessments call upon the examinee to demonstrate specific skills and competencies, that is, to apply the skills and knowledge they have mastered." -- Richard J. Stiggins -- (Stiggins, 1987, p. 34).

Evaluation is such an important part of designing and developing programs for adult learners. This site may be helpful.

"The most significant responsibility at the school is that "you are responsible for what you make of your life," McCaig says. To graduate, students write and defend a thesis that they have "prepared themselves to become effective adults in the larger community." "

"Student feedback about the use of Twitter was uniformly positive. Only one student suggested an improvement and requested more frequent study tweets. Examples of student evaluation comments included: "I LOVED the Twitter questions! It was something that kept me studying all semester." "I really liked the Twitter 'snack learning.' I only wish there were more 'tweets' covering more topics. It was a nice review to go over to prepare for comps. . . . Twitter is a good way to reach students during the day to give us something to think about.""

link to ECAR findings

"Intellectual skills, in contrast, have to do with a person's ways of reasoning, hypothesizing, exploring, understanding, and, in general, making sense of the world.  Every child is, by nature, an intellectual being--a curious, sense-making person, who is continuously seeking to understand his or her physical and social environments.  Each child is born with such skills and develops them further, in his or her own ways, through observing, exploring, playing, and questioning.  Attempts to teach intellectual skills directly inevitably fail, because each child must develop them in his or her own way, through his or her own self-initiated activities.  But adults can influence that development through the environments they provide.  "

"Studies suggest there's real value in learning and maintaining this ancient skill, even as we increasingly communicate electronically via keyboards big and small. Indeed, technology often gets blamed for handwriting's demise. But in an interesting twist, new software for touch-screen devices, such as the iPad, is starting to reinvigorate the practice." Tie in with ECAR findings writeup

An online focus group was used to investigate the experiences of nine individuals with cerebral palsy who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and social media. Information was gathered related to (a) advantages of social media, (b) disadvantages of social media, (c) barriers to successful use, (d) supports to successful use, and (e) recommendations for other individuals using AAC, support personnel, policy makers, and technology developers. Participants primarily chose to focus on social media as a benef cial tool and viewed it as an important form of communication. The participants did describe barriers to social media use (e.g., technology). Despite barriers, all the participants in this study took an active role in learning to use social media. The results are discussed as they relate to themes and with reference to published literature.