Assessment and Evaluation Using Technology

This week’s assignment is to select a prior MATLT activity that demonstrates attainment of Program Learning Outcome 6 to “technology resources to facilitate effective assessment and evaluation” and Program Learning Outcome 7 “Utilize technology to collect and analyze data, interpret results, and communicate findings”.  Redesign the activity using instructional design principles and theory.

There are different types of assessment and evaluation tools that teachers can use in the classroom.  Assessment is the evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something.  Assessment gives you feedback in strongest and weakest points and to help improve performance.  Evaluation is the assessment of a program or policy using absolute or relative criteria (McDavid, Huse, & Hawthorn, 2013).  Evaluation helps identify the quality of the performance that is usually compared to standards that have already been set and helps make judgments; whether something worked or failed. 

Assessment in the classroom is to enhance student learning and obtain feedback about student learning in course objectives.  General evaluation should be done in both summative and formative types of assessment.  This will allow the educator to facilitate fair opportunities to provide growth to the students.  Evaluation should also be ongoing to show whether or not a lesson was successful and if the students were able takeaway the main concepts.  There are two types of evaluations that can be used for assessing goals; summative and formative evaluation. 

Summative evaluation is used to assess its impact, or the worth of a program at the end of a lesson or activities.  The main focus of summative evaluations is the outcome itself.  Collection of data can be in the form of questionnaires, surveys interviews, observations, and testing. 

Formative evaluation is “indicates whether or not students have learned what they must know before progressing to the next portion of the instruction” (Newby, Stepich, Lehman, Russell, & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2011, p. 316).   Collection of data for formative evaluation can be blogs, journals, open-ended experiences, or long term projects that are done in an extended period of time. 

The assignment that will be redesigned will be is week two’s assignment in EDU: EDU652 Instructional Design & Delivery.  For this assignment, each student was to design an Absorb type activity.  The topic chosen for the design was the life cycle of a frog for second grade students.  The knowledge that was trying to be measured was:  Students will understand that frogs go through changes in their life cycle. 

·       Identify the stages of the life cycle of frogs in order from first to last. 

·       Students will be able to define metamorphosis.

·       Students will be able to compare and contrast the frog at each stage of the life cycle.

·       Students will be able to create diagrams of the life cycle of the frog.

The data was going to be collected by creating a collaborative activity for the students to participate and share with the class the life cycle as they understand it.  At the end of the activity, the class would participate in filling out a Know, Want to know, and Learned (KWL) Chart.  The evaluation during the course did not consist of much, except observing the students and recording the findings. 

To redesign this activity to include an assessment and evaluation that will show growth, I found a resource that can be used to design quizzes.  The website is called QuizStar (quizstar.4teachers.org).  With QuizStar you are able to create and edit students, manage quizzes, and gain feedback on student performance.  Setting up the class and making the quiz was really simple.  You are also able to keep a log of the student’s user name and password in case it is forgotten.  After a quiz is taken, the teacher can go back and review the results and can gain individual results or class results.  This would help the teacher identify if the lesson can be moved on or if more time needs to be spent on it.  To further explore this assessment, use the following information as a student: username: Edu697 password: class.  

The challenge of this design was the fact that I feel students learn by processing current knowledge and actively participating and organizing information.  As the Cognitivism/Pragmatism instructional design theory states, I also feel that “Learning is viewed as an active process that occurs within the learner and which can be influenced by the learner and the outcome of learning is not only dependent on what the teacher presents but also on what the learner does to process this information” (Dabbagh, 2006).  Having assessment and evaluation done with a multiple choice quiz, I feel does not help learn from their experience, but just what the teacher has taught and also is not very interactive.  The quiz falls under the Objectivism Instructional design theory by creating a learning environment by providing a correct response. 

General evaluation should be done in both summative and formative types of assessment.  This will allow the educator to facilitate fair opportunities to provide growth to the students.  Evaluation should also be ongoing to show whether or not a lesson was successful and if the students were able takeaway the main concepts.  Using both types of assessments will enable the teacher to gain more knowledge on the student’s progress than if just using one type.  With the Cognitivism/Pragmatism instructional design theory, creating more interactive ways to learn, providing hands on opportunities will give the students a chance to “remember, retrieve, and store information in memory” (Dabbagh, 2006).