{"id":654,"date":"2011-09-12T09:50:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T16:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/?p=654"},"modified":"2011-09-13T16:23:03","modified_gmt":"2011-09-13T23:23:03","slug":"formal-ed-vs-diy-part-5-assessmentgrading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/archives\/654","title":{"rendered":"Formal ed vs DIY &#8211; Part 5, Assessment\/Grading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/archives\/tag\/formal-vs-diy\">This is a part of a series on  the differences and similarities between formal and informal adult learning<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As far as I know, no P2PU course has a grading policy. To my mind, it would be somewhat antithetical to give participants grades. It flies in the face of self-directed learning to have an external judge make the decision on whether a participant has met the goals (and which goals? the course goals? the participant goals?).<\/p>\n<p>If participants didn&#8217;t need externally-validated credits (e.g. teachers and CEUs), we&#8217;d probably never even have this discussion.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, I understand that official credit cannot be given absent a determination of whether each participant has earned it.<\/p>\n<p>What then could\/should be used to assess student participation and learning? Here are some ideas.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Learner participation in discussions, collaborative projects, etc.\n<ul>\n<li>time<\/li>\n<li>number of posts<\/li>\n<li>depth of participation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Contributions to peer learning<\/li>\n<li>Accomplishment of course goals\n<ul>\n<li>as set by participants?<\/li>\n<li>as assessed by participants?<\/li>\n<li>as assessed by peers?<\/li>\n<li>as assessed by facilitators?<\/li>\n<li>as assessed by outside assessors?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Completion of traditional assessment tasks, such as written papers, presentations, tests, etc.\n<ul>\n<li>as assessed by participants?<\/li>\n<li>as assessed by facilitators?<\/li>\n<li>as assessed by outside assessors?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Only authentic assessments that reflect the achievement of course and participant goals seem useful to me. The challenge, I suppose, is coming up with assessments that meet both informal and formal requirements.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/scantrontest.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-720\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" title=\"scantrontest\" src=\"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/scantrontest.jpg\" alt=\"scantrontest\" width=\"270\" height=\"259\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/scantrontest.jpg 499w, https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/scantrontest-300x288.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a>A popular suggestion is to use objective (&#8220;one right answer&#8221;) multiple choice questions to determine if participants have mastered course goals. These kinds of assessments have the advantage of being machine scoreable.<\/p>\n<p>However, it is challenging if not impossible to create these types of questions to assess deeper learning.<\/p>\n<p>How do you write multiple choice questions to assess these kind of learning objectives?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Define what it means to learn deeply via web 2.0\/social media.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Have a deeper understanding of what the Common Core State Standards say about writing to learn and writing in the disciplines.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Explain pros and cons of different methods of engagement within different frameworks.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a tough one. Maybe my imagination or knowledge of psychometrics is too small.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps a bigger concern is eating our own dog food. If we are trying to reinforce deeper learning and authentic assessment, we must model those practices ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>I think the obsession with these kinds of tests (and especially the ones in place in K-12 that test absurdly isolated factual knowledge) is the root of a lot of problems in education. How then can we ask the teachers we are hoping will step out of this model to take a multiple choice assessment themselves?<\/p>\n<p>(After I wrote this, I read this article: <a href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/article\/To-Justify-Every-A-Some\/128528\/\">Professors Cede Grading Power to Outsiders<\/a>. Wow &#8212; so much to say about this. Think I&#8217;ll leave it for a future post though.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(This is a part of a series on the differences and similarities between formal and informal adult learning.) As far as I know, no P2PU course has a grading policy. To my mind, it would be somewhat antithetical to give<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[67,55,61,45,62],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-assessment","tag-deeper-learning","tag-formal-vs-diy","tag-p2pu","tag-p2pued"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6mlV-ay","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}