Thomas,
You brought up some great points in that essentially as instructors we hope the student appreciates and understands the value of their learning assessment and course outcomes. It is truly a team effort in the entire learning experience!
Kimberly,
What great technique! You really get the holistic use of summative assessments. So many educators don't use it as an improvement technique for the instructor.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Joseph,
True, looking holistically at the exam and looking at the patterns of learning is determining patterns of learning. We as instructors own our share of the deficiency.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Melissa,
That is true, the formative assessment should help instructors focus on learning gaps that will guide learning reinforcement.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Melissa,
Boy don't we ? I think our obsession with high stakes testing has hurt this. It seems the teacher/student becomes more adversarial.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
When conducting summative assessments, it is important to align the assessment with the learning goals and objectives of the course and ensure that those objectives are stated within the rubrics designed for the course(s).
Terry,
That is true. You want to make sure your instruction, assessment is built around learning objectives of the courses.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
I think having a clear understanding of your outcomes goals that you are assessing is important. This helps to give a clear understanding of what is expected of the students. Also, assessments help the instructor in improving the curriculum by see what the students where able to transfer to the assessment.
When conducting summative assessments, I consider student development and growth. It's important that students have learned throughout the process. I also value real world examples so it's important to see incorporation of materials in that manner.
The most important thing to consider when looking at summative assessments is that they are assessing the designated learning targets. Each course needs to have specific learning targets that are measurable.
Students need to be able to understand those learning targets and understand how their are to demonstrate their proficiency those those skills.
Assessments should not be a mystery. Students should be able to learn from summative assessments; in fact, students should be able to self-assess on their summative assessments because they should be able to clearly see how they did or didn't demonstrate the objectives.
Amanda,
You are right. So many people just see assessment as a tool to evaluate students. Assessment will give the instructor information that may help improve delivery and/or techniques in teaching.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Stacy,
Great strategy. How do you use it to evaluate your teaching?
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Lindsay,
You make great points. The summative assessment should measure the objectives. I love your statement, assessment should not be a mystery. I agree. Students need to be reminded about the learning goals of the course and/or unit.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Two important things when conducting summative assessments are:
1) Formulating an assessment that includes placement of value on the learning process. I believe some of this is loss because it is focused on in the formative process.
2)Students need to understand the evaluation process as well.
Dr. Vessel
Cynthia,
You make a great point. Students do need to understand the assessment process. I think we underestimate that. You want them to understand that the assess is to determine what they know and don't know based on the course objectives. I didn't used to go over the objectives as well in my course but now I do.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
Simply put the two most important things to look at are success and failure. What work and what didn’t. More especially did the student’s learn the expected learned outcome? What presented materials worked better than others, what did the students in general respond better to as a whole, and or a comparison to initial evaluations from the start of the course, in conjunction with comparison to previously taught course.
Does the schools you have taught at provide time/space or a forum to support instructors/professors and cultivate a environment that focus on “owning†developing a course or two courses that would be assigned, projecting 5 to 10 out and or share outcomes to following instructors on Summary evaluations or is the school more focused on other matter?
Kelly,
Interesting post. Do you use the summative assessment to look at the process of learning from the instructors' role? It seems that when many institutions the "course in the box" for instructors there doesn't seem to be room in evaluating the learning objects. How unfortunate.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
I thinkk that the two most important things to rmember when conducting summative assessments is the level of difficulty of a summative assessment, and the timing of the summative assessment. It the summative assessment is too difficult, then students will probably be overwhelmed, and not do well. Second, if the summative assessment is too infrequent, then the amount of material in the summative assessment may again be overwhelming. Like the porridge in the story of the three bears, porridge must be just right.
Since the summative assessment occurs at the end of the course I would want to be sure that it directly relates to the course objectives. I would also keep in mind that it is not only to measure the students success in the course but also that of the instructor. Valuable feedback can be provided to the student about their readiness to use the material that they have just learned.
Donald,
You make such an important point. Timing is everything. If the timing is right you have rich information. If the time is wrong you can really be the barrier to student learning.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
