New Assessment Strategies - The magic of feedback
New Assessment Strategies - The magic of feedback
The course explains how to accompany students during their learning path with assessment activities. The aim of these activities is to give frequent feedback, so that it can be easier for students to keep on track and arrive at the final assessment properly prepared.
Course description
Many times in students’ lives assessment is synonym of stressful experience, and connecting “learning” with “stress” means making it an awful experience after all, which compromises long term memory of what you have learned. Neuroscientific research proved it already; positive motivation, on the contrary, promote a qualitative improvement of the brain circuitry involved in memory and executive functions.
Superior learning happens in classroom experiences relevant to students’ lives, interests and experiences. So: what if we moved the assessment within the learning path? We could transform it in a check-in to see if learning is there, otherwise we could give feedback and support students to get back on track. A question or an exercise, every once in a while, does not interrupt the learning flux but supports it in keeping the right direction, toward the achievement of the learning outcomes. After that learning will be already there, it’s only a matter of its measurement.
This MOOC is entitled “New Assessment Strategies”, because it focuses on new ways to perform assessment, focusing on learning and not only on its measurement. It is part of the “MOOCs for Teachers” series and according to the series’ style, it talks mainly to teachers who want to improve their effective support to students.
In this MOOC you’ll have the chance to listen about these factors directly from the voice of teachers who are familiar with different kind of formative feedback in very different contexts. You’ll meet the following guests: Marius Boboc (Professor Cleveland State University, USA) Ignacio Jaramillo Urrutia (Teaching Management Manager at the ILUMNO University Network, Colombia), Ana Moura Santos (Assistant Professor of the Dep. of Mathematics of Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal) and Maurizio Zani (Physics Researcher at Politecnico di Milano, Italy).
Total workload of the course: 13 hours
This MOOC is provided by Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with UNIT (Université Numérique Ingénierie et Technologie)
Intended Learning Outcomes
By actively participating in this MOOC, you will achieve different intended learning outcomes (ILOs).
Week 1 - Concrete experiences of formative assessment
- Define the concept of formative assessment
ESCO: assessment processes - Go through some concrete experiences based on new assessment strategies and coming from different scenarios around the world
- Follow them while they tell us what they did together with their students to apply formative assessment strategies in their classrooms
ESCO: give constructive feedback ESCO: manage feedbackESCO: adapt teaching to student's capabilities - Define your personal learning outcomes for this course
Week 2 - Reflect on the design and delivery of the assessment activities
- Follow our guests sharing what they expected to obtain applying new assessment strategies
- Reflect on the design strategies applied in their courses
ESCO: instructional design models - Analyse the challenges that may be encountered while applying formative assessment, in order to recognize them soon enough when designing the next learning path for your students
ESCO: learning needs analysis
Week 3 - The theoretical background of formative assessment
- Describe the reasons why formative assessment is effective for deep learning
ESCO: education scienceESCO: pedagogy - Analyse with our expert the methodologies that lie beyond formative assessment strategies in order to build effective learning experiences
- Identify the most effective assessment activities you may want to try
ESCO: assessment processes - Describe the value of the feedback and how to make it most effective
ESCO: assist students in their learning - Point out the strategies adopted by our guests and find what might suit your goals at best
ESCO: apply teaching strategies
Week 4 - Design your new assessment strategy!
- Find some examples of templates coming from literature and from our guests' experiences: you can reuse and adapt them to your learning goals in order to design formative assessment activities for your courses
ESCO: apply teaching strategiesESCO: conduct educational activities - Recognize our guests' tips and tricks about designing activities for formative assessment, in order to avoid some mistakes and make the most of your experiences with students
ESCO: perform classroom managementESCO: adapt teaching to student's capabilities
The pedagogical approach adopted in this MOOC
- Show the importance of the teaching approach you adopt in your courses
ESCO: education scienceESCO: pedagogy - Put forward arguments about the mix between your role as a teacher, the teaching and learning strategies adopted and the flipped classroom approach
ESCO: teaching and training
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge is required for this course, even if previous experience in didactics and teaching will be helpful. The course is mainly addressed to professors and teachers, at all levels, who are willing to think about some innovation in their pedagogical approach.
Activities
Over and above consulting the content, in the form of videos and other web-based resources (the reading path), you will have the opportunity to discuss course topics and to share ideas with your peers in the Forum of this MOOC (the communication path). The forum is freely accessible and participation is not guided. You can also perform design activities to build your own courses using templates and suggestions about new assessment strategies (the production path).
In addition to these different types of activities and levels of involvement, the course entails questions in the form of self-assessment quizzes or as hints for reflection, as well as discussion activities in the Forum and design activities in WEEK 4. You are not required to answer these questions or participate to activities to complete the course, but we strongly believe they offer you a concrete opportunity to improve your knowledge! Instead, the quiz you will find at the end of the core WEEKs (except WEEK 0 and the final section on the pedagogical approach) will be evaluated.
Topic outline
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Week 0 is an introduction to the MOOC, its structure and the main subject we are dealing with.
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From week 1 to week 4 you’ll find the core part of the MOOC, dealing with New Assessment Strategies: you’ll start from concrete experiences and, through a deep reflection on them and a guided analysis of the theoretical background, you’ll reach the “hands on” part, in which you’ll have the chance to start using this approach for your own course’s design.
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From week 1 to week 4 you’ll find the core part of the MOOC, dealing with New Assessment Strategies: you’ll start from concrete experiences and, through a deep reflection on them and a guided analysis of the theoretical background, you’ll reach the “hands on” part, in which you’ll have the chance to start using this approach for your own course’s design.
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From week 1 to week 4 you’ll find the core part of the MOOC, dealing with New Assessment Strategies: you’ll start from concrete experiences and, through a deep reflection on them and a guided analysis of the theoretical background, you’ll reach the “hands on” part, in which you’ll have the chance to start using this approach for your own course’s design.
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From week 1 to week 4 you’ll find the core part of the MOOC, dealing with New Assessment Strategies: you’ll start from concrete experiences and, through a deep reflection on them and a guided analysis of the theoretical background, you’ll reach the “hands on” part, in which you’ll have the chance to start using this approach for your own course’s design.
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The final section focuses on the pedagogical approach applied in this MOOC as a whole. This section has been designed and developed by Université Numérique Ingénierie et Technologie. In this section you’ll have the chance, as a teacher, to reflect on the overall design phase of a course, as a meta-level.
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Assessment
The final grade for the course is based on your results from your responses to the graded quizzes. You will successfully complete the course if you reach 60% (or more) of the total score. The maximum score possible for each quiz is given at the top of the quiz. You can see your score in the quiz on your last attempt or on the 'Grades' page.
Certificate of accomplishment
You must be registered in POK through Politecnico di Milano personal account to obtain the Certificate of Accomplishment. It will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by achieving at least 60% of the total score in the graded quizzes and filling the final survey. You will be able to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly from Politecnico di Milano web services. The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.
Information about fees and access to materials
The course is delivered in online mode and is available free of charge.
Course faculty
Paola Corti
Paola Corti is a Project Manager at Politecnico di Milano – METID; she is an instructional designer involved in MOOCs design and production for POK platform. She coordinated the design of the course, involved international testimonials, together with other curators, in order to collect the experiences available in this MOOC, and she kept together the design and the production groups… and many are things needed : )
Ariane Dumont
Ariane Dumont, Professor at the Western Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Educational Developer and responsible for promoting innovation in pedagogy. She will nicely guide you through some interesting models, which can support you in exploring and experimenting OERs according to her experience, which she is eager to share with us.
Aude Pichon
Aude Pichon, Advisor in Pedagogy in the Center for Professional Development in Education at the Ecole des Mines in Nantes and Coordinator, she has been in charge of the pedagogical development within uTOP (UNIT) in France. She not only advises on teacher training projects, but also develops them and leads them either face-to-face or remotely.
Contact details
If you have any enquiries about the course or if you need technical assistance please contact pok@polimi.it. For further information, see FAQ page.