Educational Origami

Its that time of the year again when staff and schools roll out examinations as a way of assessing the students learning. Examinations are a useful tool in summative assessment, but of course they are not the only tool in the tool kit.

I have been thinking about the advice I give to staff about examinations to support them in making these assessments as useful and beneficial as possible.

My first question would be “do you need an examination? are there better ways of assessing the learning and development of the student?” the answer is invariably yes to both questions. Often we are required to use examination as a tool of assessment and yes there may be better ways but this is one of the ways we have been told to use.

The next piece of advice is this…

Write the examination and the mark scheme simultaneously.

To often we write a question and discover after its gone to print that its unanswerable, beyond the scope of learning, too simple, too hard or is not identifying the aspect of learning we wanted it to. If you can’t write the answer as you develop the question how are your students meant to.

Do my marking descriptors allow the students to achieve or have I written them in such a way to mean a student can only achieve in one way? Am I limiting the students to a low grade by the criteria I have written, is it a “they ahve to do this and this and this and this and this…..” and if they miss out on one point they have failed even if they show higher level understanding.

Does the question allow the student to show depth and extent of learning?

This obviously does not apply to multi-choice or bubble test questions, but does the question allow the student to demonstrate their depth and breadth of understanding to show a progression from…

Identify –> Outline –> Describe –> Explain –> Analyse –> Evaluate

Am I expecting the students to be multi-lingual?

Do my students have to understand two languages – the language of assessment and the language of my subject. How many of my students are lost before they have started because they do not understand the language of assessment.

If I was to ask what is the difference between describe and explain would they know? My students are provided with definitions of the assessment terms on the cover of their examination –

• Outline - give a brief account;
• Describe – give a detailed account;  
• Explain – give a detailed account including causes, reasons or mechanisms.
• and so on

Are the questions structured and balanced?

is there an appropriate balance between lower order thinking and higher order thinking in the number of questions.

I ask my colleagues to proof my examination.
I ask them to please ask these questions as they are working through the examinations.
•    Does it make sense?
•    Does it suit the audience?
•    Does it flow from lower order to higher order questions? from topic to topic?
•    What is the purpose of the task, question or instruction? Does it show the learning outcomes?
•    Does the weighting match the complexity of the task?
•    Is it achievable? allow the students to show excellence?
•    Is the examination manageable and realistic for the time frame?
•   Is the coverage of the examination suitable in terms of the students learning

I am working on an end of unit review that I want to use with all of the teachers in my faculty. The purpose of the review is multiple:

• I would like the students to give us feedback on the unit of learning they have just undertaken
• Assessment and learning objectives should be clear and transparent, again I would like feedback on this
• Teaching and learning should be purposeful and deliberate
• The students workload and the level of challenge in their learning needs to be appriopriate
• learning should be engaging, motivating and have logical structure and flow.

I would appreciate feedback on this review tool (download the PDF file here End of Unit Review Questions)

This starter sheets is looking at the online service Crocodoc which allows the users to upload, share and annotate document. The documents can then be downloaded in the mark-up format or in the original format.

This service supports PDF and Microsoft office files. This is a useful way of collating student work sharing  exemplars and adding comments and drawing with out modifying the original document.

starter sheet – crocodoc formative assessment

Other Starter sheets are available at http://edorigami.wikispaces.com

Educational origami wiki

This is the next in the assessment series – this use a blog as the medium for a student applying the reflective cycle to reflect on an event.

The reflective cycle has 5 stages -

1. Select an event
2. describe the event – what, where, when and who
3. Analyse the event – break it down into the component elements and as the How and why questions
4. Evaluate the event – make a judgement having considered the impact, importance, effectiveness and relationships
5. Transform – make a change based on the process

This can be used in a wide range of situations whether it is a student reflecting on their learning and contribution, a students posting a comment on a peers blog and using the cycle to offer critique and comment or a student reflecting on the events of the day.

Starter sheet reflection cycle in a blog post

As always comments are appreciated

For the complete set of starter sheets visit the education origami wiki – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com

educational origami wiki

This is the next starter sheet in the assessment series. This is slightly more specialized in terms of the software being used, but the principles being applied are the same no matter what the testing tool is.

Diagnostic testing is looking backwards to plan forwards. It can also include a snapshot of the understanding of the new unit of learning, in other words what to the students actually know about this topic, unit or concept.

The process of developing a diagnostic test will include:

• Identifying the assumed knowledge that is critical to the students learning.
• Identifying a range of aspects of the new unit that could be examined. Ideally these should be the basic elements.
• Decide on a suitable assessment method – Multiple choice questions are good for lower order thinking i.e. remember and understanding

Ask yourself the questions -

1. What does this question or task show?
2. Does this identify prior learning, or existing knowledge?
3. How will it help me to adapt and change my program of learning?

Starter Sheet – Diagnostic assess in moodle

Click here for the other starter sheets in the series. http://edorigami.wikispaces.com

As always feedback is appreciated.

Educational Origami

This is the next starter sheet in the assessment series. This starter sheet looks at using the versitile and adaptable workhorse Voicethread http://voicethread.com to provide rich formative feedback to the students in text, audio or audio-visual mediums. Students are able to develop and upload presentations and then narrate these leaving voice comments as narration on each slide in their presentation. This narration plays as the slide is opened. The presentation can be automated to work through all of the slides.

For the teacher, leaving a comment on students work is as simple as playing the slides and clicking on the text, voice or web camera comment button at the bottom of the page. From their the speak a comment or type a statement or both.

As always, I would appreciate feedback on the starter sheets.

startersheet – formative assess with voicethread

For more starter sheets click here – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com

Diagnostic assessment is one of the three main forms of assessment we use. It is critical element of good teaching practice as it values past learning and lets us work out where our students are as we continue the learning journey.

Diagnostic assessment is used at the start of a unit of learning and frequently at the start of a class, where the teacher uses it to establish what theirs students have learnt and retained from previous classes. It can be as simple as a question and answer session or more structured using tools like Google forms which will collate and record the students responses and provide the instructor with a summary of the class’s responses.

This starter sheet looks at using Google forms as a tools to develop, deploy and collate diagnostic assessments.

diagnostic assessment – google forms

For other starter sheets check out the Educational Origami wiki - http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Starter+Sheets

URL for Educational Origami Wiki

This is the next starter sheet in the set I am working on for providing technology tools for feedback.

In this starter sheet, its looking at the tool set available in Google documents to provide feedback, critiques and correction. The tools include the revision history tool and using the comments tools to have a threaded discussion with the contributors. Google documents is a powerful and adaptable tool that is easily accessible in most parts of the world, from almost all devices.

starter sheet – google documents – feedback

As always I would appreciate your feedback. Check out the other starter sheets here - http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Starter+Sheets

The Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project  Zero team has developed a useful tool for providing feedback. The tool is intended for a colleague or peer to provide feedback to a teaching peer about either their lesson, unit or potentially course of learning.

I have been working on assessment for some presentation I have coming up and this is a potentially useful tool for providing structured and considered feedback. As teachers we know the value of providing feedback and critique to our students, but we sometimes struggle with receiving feedback ourselves. I have adapted the ladder of feedback tool to suit student feedback on a unit of learning.

Ladder of feedback template

The Original  Ladder of feedback has four steps or phases. They are:

1. Clarify – are there aspects of this lesson, unit course that you don’t believe you understood?
2. Value – what do you see in this lesson, unit or course that you find to be particularly impressive, innovative or strong?
3. Offer Concerns – Do you detect some potential problems or challenges within this lesson, unit or course? Do you disagree with some part of the design
4. Suggest – Do you have suggestions on how to address the concerns you identified during the last step?

In some ways it resembles a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, how ever the arrangement is more education focused and is far more usable.

Resources:

https://makinglearningvisibleresources.wikispaces.com/Ladder+of+Feedback

https://makinglearningvisibleresources.wikispaces.com/file/view/Ladder+of+FeedbackGuide.pdf

http://articlescoertvisser.blogspot.co.nz/2007/11/feedback-in-three-steps.html

http://www.slideshare.net/susanlulee/teaching-for-understanding-framework-in-practice

http://www.pz.harvard.edu/

http://idt744.wikispaces.com/Ladder+of+Feedback+Rubric

This is the next starter sheet focusing on how to use comment tools for formative assessment. In this example the range of tools available in the product allow the reviewer to add audio comments, text based comment and well as a range of drawing tools.

Being able to add notes to PDF is a powerful tool in the teachers tool kit. Most students can produce a PDF either natively within the application (This a standard in most Apple applications, adobe products and also some Microsoft tools as well) or using a plug in like CutePDF . The advantages for the student is they don’t have to worry about the layout of their work being changed or compatibility with the teachers software. For the teacher, they can annotate the document and share the changes with the students quickly and easily.

As always feedback is welcomed.

starter sheet – adobe acrobat reader Review