Evaluation
The process of evaluation is also under transformation here. Teachers have
found that creating such a learning environment may not fit in with the
old mold for assessment; instead new strategies have to be combined with
the old, perhaps even replacing some entirely. The attention becomes focused
more on the process as opposed to the product. Testing for knowledge, which
can be fleeting and which is continuously growing to the point of overkill,
is less an issue than ensuring that the students are aware of how to access
and use the knowledge that they need.
Observation
A major part of such assessment involves consistent teacher monitoring
of student interactions with one another and with the computer. The emphasis
is more towards a formative evaluation, since the goal is to assist the
students to grow and improve. To facilitate this process, many teachers
use anecdotal notes and/or checklists, some of which might actually be
filled out by the students. Appendix D provides sample checklists and a
student questionnaire designed to aid in the evaluation related to a research
project. Part of it is also intended to gather student reaction to the
activity so as to improve it or other similar projects. Giving the students
a voice in the development and improvement of class activities affords
them more control over their learning environment and helps to make subsequent
learning more relevant to them.
Feedback
In the case of tutor-type software, students’ scores might be recorded
automatically. This could be particularly helpful in identifying a student
who needs individual help with a given concept or skill or in monitoring
progress over successive. The students’ computer journals are another means
of getting feedback on the learning process.
Students Folios
Another strategy which some teachers employ as an aid in evaluation is
the requirement that students retain all materials used or created during
the course of a project and submit them so that the teacher can trace their
development and better assess their ability to avail of and make appropriate
use of suitable resources.
Diverse Student Output
Generally, in order to provide closure to an activity, there is some type
of end product involved. Having allowed the students to use a variety of
means of assessing information, including the computer, a similar flexibility
should be provided for the sharing of what has been learned. Davis (1991)
calls for a “celebration of knowledge not a failure of testing”. He purports
that the teacher should allow freedom of choice in how students present
their learning; some of those options might be a diorama, a drawing, a
model, a report, a story, a play, a video, a poem or a song. This is in
keeping with the notion that people are different and learn differently.
As teachers, we should respect, value and nurture that diversity both in
providing a learning environment which supports this individualized growth,
as well as in valuing the variable fruit of such efforts.
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Version française
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TOC |
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Created by:
Jane Scaplen
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last update January 29, 1999 | dernière mise
à jour le 29 janvier 1999
