From what you’ve seen of the course so far and in the course outline, which of the assessment strategies in your reading this week are being used in this course?
I think this course contains a variety of assessment strategies, including formative assessment, summative assessment, self-assessment, and authentic assessment. According to the reading “Assessing Learning”, formative assessment emphasizes on the process of learning. Instructors give feedback on assignments, allowing students to improve on next assignments or even revise the current work. In this course, we have various tasks along the way. For example, we have four assignments needed to submit during the learning process. We can always improve our works based on the instructor’s feedback on the previous assignment. On the other hand, the summative assessment usually take place at the end of the unit study as the final assessment. In other words, the summative assessment somehow determines student’s overall achievement in the course. In this course, we have a final group project that takes up to 40% of the overall grade. The purpose of the project is to evaluate student’s understanding and application of the course material in general. In terms of self-assessment, the course requires students to complete weekly blogs. Group members are encouraged to meet frequently to reflect on the learning material and comment on each other’s blogs. Lastly, the course also includes authentic assessment. This type of assessment highlights on its relevance to real-world scenarios (Conrad and Openo, 2018). Since it is an online education course, students’ effort to create a learning design blueprint aligns with the overall goal of education in reality.
Which are not being used?
Although I mentioned that summative assessment is included in this course, it is not highly emphasized. One reason is that students are not provided with frequent unit tests and the midterm exam/project. The course pays more attention to the process of learning.
What learning theories (from Week 1) do these connect to?
Personally, I think Cognitivism is related to all four types of assessment mentioned above because these assessment methods can effectively evaluate students’ cognitive achievements, such as the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information needed. Moreover, Behaviourism is best related to the self-assessment/weekly blog assignments in the course. According to Ertmer and Newby (2013), the Behaviorism emphasizes “on producing observable and measurable outcomes in students [behavioral objectives, task analysis, criterion-referenced assessment] …on mastering early steps before progressing to more complex levels of performance [sequencing of instructional presentation, mastery learning] …” (para. 27). This means that Behaviourism helps us, students, learn by doing tasks that we can see and measure. These weekly blogs help us divide large learning chunks into smaller sections. Also, the weekly blog assignments let us write about our learning experiences. This practice helps us remember what we learned and see our progress over time. By doing these assignments regularly, we can see clear improvements in our skills and understanding. This matches the Behaviourist idea of learning through practice and measurable outcomes. It also helps us become better at managing our own learning and staying motivated (students should be self-motivated since there is no synchronous lectures in this course).
How does it compare to other courses you’ve taken in your studies?
This course greatly differs from my learning experiences at UVic. Take PAAS420: Chinese Narrative: Ming-Qing Drama and Fiction in Chinese Society as an example. Students are required to finish ten weekly online quizzes, two group discussions, online mid-term exam, midterm short essay, online final exam, and the final research paper. It is clear that PAAS420 really emphasizes on the formative assessment due to its high frequency of unit quizzes, midterm exam and project, as well as the two group discussions through the term.
In terms of learning theories, the frequent online quizzes and exams are behaviorist because they help us learn through repetition and immediate feedback. These tests give us chances to practice and get reinforced for correct answers, which shapes our learning behavior. Following that, the mid-term and final research papers, and the short essay, need us to use higher-level thinking like analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating. These tasks make us think deeply about the material, which is what cognitivism focuses on. Moreover, group discussions and working together on the final research paper help us build our understanding through social interaction and teamwork. This matches constructivist theories that say learning happens best through active participation and social learning.
