Friday, August 15, 2014

Self Assessment

    Self-assessment is an assessment approach that involves learners in evaluating their own achievement and learning outcomes (Fenwick & Parsons, 2009). Self-assessment promotes life-long learning by encouraging the student to be a more active, responsible and reflective participants in learning process. As an assessment tool, self-assessment has its main strengths in development of evaluative and critical abilities, independent learning, responsibility, proactivity and creativity. However, issues such as time constraints, mismatch between learning and marks should also be addressed before its implementation. (Sluijsmans, Dochy, & Moerkerke, 2014)

While reading through the chapters and journal articles about self-assessment, I reflected upon my previous experience with this approach. Assessment as a tool for learning has a great impact on learner’s development. But it is noticeable from my experience that, once students submit their work, they typically become disengaged with the learning process and “move on” to the next task. Although I had tried to make the rubric explicit and transparent, it seems like many students were still passive recipients of the assessment outcomes rather than taking the ownership of their own learning. One semester, I included the grading table as part of the lab report component, so that, they “had to” assess themselves in the table, and check their own learning before submission. Many improvements were observed in this practice. Almost all the submitted reports shown a significant increase in the score. And some students commented that they felt they had influence and involvement in their learning.

Why is self-assessment effective? I think effective learning is heavily impacted by how much meaningful energy learners put in. Self-assessment fosters students’ feelings of ownership instead of feeling “being judged”. It signals the students that their experience and judgments are valued and respected, so that they are willing to take the responsibility and strive for their own success.  At the same time, their critical thinking skills improve in self-assessment. They identify their strengths and weaknesses, then seek ways to improve.
The second question is, are the learners able to assess themselves? Self-assessment may not be suitable for all levels of learners. (Fenwick & Parsons, 2009) Implementation of innovative approaches also needs careful thinking of the learner group. Besides, for self-assessment, the most difficult part may be to determine the grading criteria. It needs to be informational, open, and explicit with the aims and standards of learning. (Thomas, Martin, & Pleasants, 2011) The overriding authority in the assessment may also be maintained as well.

The concept of self-assessment has given me new insights about assessment strategies. I think it is a very useful tool especially to prepare our learners for future learning. I am also planning to use this approach more often in my practice and there will be a few improvements this time after this week’s reading. First of all, I will spend sufficient time discussing with students of my rationale for doing so. This discussion engages student’s thinking about learning and assessment and also give the student opportunities to seek answers to their own concerns about this approach. Secondly, in order to support the students, I will discuss annotated examples of good, average and poor quality work collaboratively with the students. So that, their judgements are “calibrated” and their understanding of the criteria is enhanced. Lastly, in addition to the self-assessed results, I will also provide descriptive feedbacks to their work. Although self-assessed mark may not be accurate, the goal of assessment is not just providing the accurate mark, but also to promote learning. From this sense, I think it will be meaningful to implement this approach into my future teaching practice.



References

Fenwick, T., & Parsons, J. (2009). Art of Evaluation, 2nd Edition, A Resource for Educators and Trainers. Thompson Educational Publishig.
Sluijsmans, D., Dochy, F., & Moerkerke, G. (2014). The Use of Self-, Peer-, and Co-assesssment in Higher-Education: A Review of Literature. Wageningen, Netherlands: Educational Technology Expertise Centre (OTEC) , Open University of the Netherlands.
Thomas, G., Martin, D., & Pleasants, K. (2011). Using Self- and Peer-Assessment to Enhance Students’ Future-Learning in Higher Education. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 8(1), Article 5.


Thursday, August 14, 2014

Implementing Electronic Lab Notebook in Organic Chemistry Lab


Technology has surely changed our ways of thinking, learning and teaching. As an educator, introducing new educational tool and teaching students how to make use of them to aid their learning are very valuable experience too.

This semester, I participated in implementing electronics lab notebook in Organic Chemistry Lab
Here is the video about Element Electronic Lab Notebook

Here are the problems we found so far -
- Registration Delay (which is very frustrating) - Free registration has to be done manually by a representative and occasionally it takes more than a week.
- Access Control Difficulty (this happens when we are trying to grade student's notebook. You won't be able to create a teacher-only area for grades since the students "own" the lab notebook.
- Pushback from students who are not tech savvy

Here are the advantages of using it in the lab-
- Cloud storage of student's data which makes group collaboration easy
- Built-in ChemDraw tool
- Availability of multimedia content blocks

I'll follow up in this topic, and talk more about how it is used in organic chemistry lab. This is going to be revolutionary of course. However it also triggered my thinking of educational tools -- what should we consider more before trying a new tool? Does it aid learning, or simply making things more complicated? Is the era of paper and pencil really over? I guess that's another topic I want to write about in another blog.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Assessing Group Work


“Effective cooperative learning requires the presence of two elements. First there must be group goals, so that the students are working as a group, not merely working in group. Second, there must be individual accountability, so that students cannot be carried along by the work of others.” (William, 2011) (As Retrieved from Instructor Jeff May’s comment on PIDP 3230 Course Forum/Hot Potato Topic Group Work)

            This topic caught my attention because of the issues that I came across in assessing group work last semester. In the second semester general chemistry lab, students spend four-week in group of four to complete a research project based on copper mining scenario. During the four weeks, students work in instructor-assigned groups, and submit group reports which account for the same grade for each individual member. The intention of the group assignment is to promote cooperative learning and develop team work skills. However, there were complaints about, such as, low-performing students in the group and mistakes that made by an individual, but causing low grades for all in the group. It revealed problems in both team building and group work assessment that need to be thoroughly considered, and sought ways to resolve.
            There is no doubt that group work is essentially meaningful in education. Students learn from clarifying and refining their understanding through discussion and debate. They develop a sense of responsibility (What are the Benefits of Group Work?, 2014). More importantly, it prepares students with the interpersonal, collaborative and organizational skills to become a successful team player in the workplace. All these benefits rely on the two elements as pointed out from the quote, team spirit and individual accountability. However, to achieve the learning objectives from group work, we instructors should work to assist in team building, establish clear assessment guidelines (Assessing Group Work, 2014) to ensure individual accountability, keep communicating with groups and individual students to resolve concerns and issues.

            How we instructors help build the team is the first question to answer from the quote. If team work skill is one of our objectives, shall we teach our students how to resolve conflicts and how to cooperate in a respectful manner? Unfortunately, we often times “assume” that students will naturally learn from their unsuccessful practice. Team building begins from determining group membership. Letting the students to choose their group allow the students work with the ones they know and trust. The students will be more willing to resolve the conflicts if they were the ones selecting their own group members. Suggestions can also be given regarding how to break down the project into individual accountability, what skills/personalities are needed for a particular task, how often group meetings should be held, and how to respectfully communicate within the group.
Instructors take the roles of administrator, observer and moderator in group work. One of the concerns from the students is that, the group work may not fairly assess individual contributions. For example, in the final “product”, students also include details of the “process”, such as, who did what, when they met, how they made decisions in the discussion. Instructor can also review the group logbook often, and praise those who carries heavier responsibilities. This arrangement can motivate each member to make a more significant contribution.

After thinking through the quote, here are a few things that I can do differently next year when coordinating group work:
-        Allow students to pick the group instead of grouping them merely based on the test scores.
-        Spend 20-30 minutes in class teaching how to work effectively in a group, team management and task management
-        Provide written advice, such as, how to break down the project into multiple equal amount of tasks, and assign to the right person
-        Encourage students to communicate with the instructor frequently to address concerns and problems
Assessing group work is different from assessing individual work. There are several options evaluating group assessment (William, 2011). To maintain assessment validity and reliability, it makes more sense to assess both product of group work and the level of interaction that has taken place in the process. Formative assessment should be conducted by instructor, through self-assessment and peer-assessment. This may need pre-established criteria that inexperience learners can readily apply. Learners can obtain timely, anonymously (if necessary) feedbacks, to function better in the group. In the summative assessment, I will award group mark as a base mark for individual, and adjust for individual contributions and peer assessed marks. Students should be clearly informed about the marking procedures and rationales at the beginning of the project.

References

Assessing Group Work. (2014). Retrieved from AUTC-Australian Universities Teaching Committee: www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning
Fenwick, T., & Parsons, J. (2009). Art of Evaluation, 2nd Edition, A Resource for Educators and Trainers. Thompson Educational Publishig.
What are the Benefits of Group Work? (2014, July). Retrieved from Design & Teach a Course - CMU: http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/instructionalstrategies/groupprojects/benefits.html
William, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Solution Tree; US Edition edition .