Assessing technology-based learning (Assessment in the 21st Century)

Traditionally assessments in schools and universities are still the examinations. But there are Changes is beginning in the nature of the assessments. There are numbers of teachers who start to change their ways to assess students. They use assessing technology-based learning method. This is "methods of assessment that prompt students to represent their learning and enable you to make inferences about students learning Technology-students’ students 'learning, Peggy L. Maki".

The purposes of assessing technology-based learning are:

·        Inform students how well they have learnt and where they need to develop further understanding.

·        Reinforce the learning process and measure success.

·        To provide teachers with an understanding of the students' abilities.

21st Century Assessment will enable students to perform rich real tasks, often collaborative, involving higher order thinking. Also, the tasks will reflect 21st Century learning. They will be clear and transparent, with the student, their peers and the teacher intimately involved in the marking process. Actually, it focused on both the learning process and the assessment outcomes.

In this course, all assessments that instructor asked us to do during the course were best examples of what the assessment in the 21^st century look like. It is not the traditional way to assess students' abilities and performance through written tests which demand students to memorize lots of information from which they do not benefit anything. They just study for examinations to get high grades and then forget all those information. Actually, in this course we learned about a lot of assessment methods that are oriented in using the new techniques. Examples of those assessments were the following:

1.     Creating educational lesson by using Active inspire software.

2.     Creating a WebQuest website.

3.     Writing reflections.

The first assessment, we learned how to:

·        Apply the learning theories.

·        Create an educational lesson and use it in the interactive whiteboards.

·        Apply features of the good design of the educational presentations when designing the lesson.

·        Choose excellent multimedia to enhance the learning environment.

·        Create valid assessment to assess the students' performance.

·        Engage students in the lessons content.

·        Use elements of the active inspire to motivate students.

" The interface of first assessment"

The second assessment taught us the following:

·        Teaching students by using problem-solving based learning.

·        It is the first time of us to learn about the WebQuest and its components and how to use each component to create best and creative WebQuest.

·        How to integrate the WebQuest into class activities and use it effectively.

 " The interface of second assessment"

The third assessment was writing reflection paper, and this assessment helped us to think deeply and make connections between different subjects. Moreover, it is a great chance to express our opinions about how we were learning in the course.

The 21^st century assessment is not only the types of the assessments; it also includes how the students will be assessed. I mean it is necessary to provide rubric to students to know in advance about their performance as our instructor did with us in this course.

In my opinion, the 21^st century assessments are not difficult to apply in our schools and universities. But, some educators and teachers still resist accepting changes in their assessment methods. It could be because they are being afraid to use the technology in teaching process; also they think that the traditional tests show the students performance. In fact, I am with applying new ways to assess students to make learning process more interactive and to make students motivated to complete their tasks. I decided to assess my students in the future by using the assessments like what we have learned in this course because it is easy to apply and it is easy for students to do.  Actually, the IT curriculum provides many of new techniques and choices to assess students in new way. For example, they learn a lot of new software that make them able to create professional projects and productions.

Finally, in my opinion, it is necessary to provide different of types of assessment to provide chances to all students to do their best in the type that is best appropriate for them because as the students are different in acquiring knowledge, they are different in handling assessments. This point is so important that teachers should be aware of.

 

"This video is my own production. It is a short story about the type of assessment in the past and now. Enjoy!"

References:

http://genyes.org/media/freeresources/assessing_tech_literacy_whitepaper.pdf

http://www.caacentre.ac.uk/dldocs/alter.pdf