Assessment and Evaluation - reaching the bar!

Sometimes, as learners, we don't like the word "evaluation" as it means we are being tested. However, we do like the concept of "grades" so that we can see how well we do. How is it that students can be so split between the same thing?

Assessment and evaluation are/should be utilized to gauge student learning using various methods and tools. According to Newcomb, et al, in chapter 14 of "Methods," we use assessment/evaluation to understand the needs of the learners, encourage instructional improvement, give motivation and self-appraisal for students, and develop instruction and grades. These are all important reasons for assessment, and I believe they effectively display its significance in the learning and teaching model.

There is an article by ASCD, however, that points out something that we should always remember in assessment - it should be FOR student learning, not OF student learning. I think this can be a gray area in instructional development, but this quote from the article really sums it up:

Unlike assessment of learning, which attempts to get a fix on what students know for the purposes of giving grades or evaluating schools, the array of test-like events in assessment for learning is always linked to the question “What's next instructionally?” Students are key players in this endeavor because one aim of this assessment approach is to empower students to monitor their own progress toward clearly understood curricular goals.

The author points out the concern of standardized tests in threatening this value of assessment. As national standardized tests are an example of an assessment OF learning, they are currently threatening to replace the need for frequent assessment FOR learning in the classroom, as schools are being threatened by poor standardized test results. The author calls for "instructionally sensitive accountability tests" with a few recommendations that would probably help with the standardized testing system. While I too am slightly opinionated about national/state standardized tests, I do not think I should digress from this blog entry much more... sooo...

What else about assessment? Well, there is the "how." We can use tests, careful to structure them properly and identify the best methods given the content. But we must maintain VALIDITY (making sure the content is tested properly) and RELIABILITY (making sure there is consistency in grading) for our tests. So, next time you pick one of the major test types (multiple choice, short answer, true/false, matching, essay), be sure you check that your test is valid and reliable. I used to think that testing was created to be tricky, to deceive the students, and in reading Methods (ch 14), it may seem that way, but after taking an educational psychology course that truly outlined the significance of assessment/test item structure, I agree that we really need to stick to the structure to evaluate genuine learning.

Another aspect of assessment that I think is not commonly considered, at least outside of Ag Ed, is affective assessment. We want to make sure our students are developing as a whole person, so why not assess them on it? They types of affective assessment listed in the Methods book were helpful to understand how we can go about pursuing effective whole person assessment.

And... PERFORMANCE! Whether it is a skill sheet or product evaluation, we have a great need for performance (psychomotor skill) assessment in agricultural education - we are, after all, known for our experiential learning foundations. One of the interesting things learned from this week's readings was the article on "Evaluating learning in lab settings" (by Warner, Myers). This article outlined some really cool CONCEPT MAPS that I have never seen/thought of to use for student assessment. Additionally, it proposed the "vee map" - a REALLY COOL reflection of assessing student achievement of the scientific method in a laboratory/experiment situation. I have never seen this model but intend to use it to make the scientific method more applicable to ag laboratory experiences!

Vee map example!

Compare/contrast concept map - simple but great to reflect understanding!

Then, let's not forget how we pull assessment together into GRADING. Students like grades... when they truly reflect their learning. Grades also must reflect objectives in the course/unit, otherwise the assessment structure of a program is useless. Grading should also include variety (of assessment) to accommodate different student learning/testing styles throughout the course. Within grading, we must be RELIABLE (mentioned above) so we have to be sure to use RUBRICs effectively! These rubrics, as identified by Stoughton and Myers ("Creativity and working with rubrics"), can either be task-specific or generic. Within each of those two types, we can develop an analytical (proficiency) rubric or a holistic (achieved it) rubric. We just need to keep certain our criteria and rubric values are appropriate for the content learned and assessed.

PSA does not = Public Service Announcement. Problem Solving!

PSA? Well a Public Service Announcement could be a tool in presenting a problem for the Problem-Solving Approach to teaching, but they are not equivalent.

PSA lab - time to pick a unit we will be teaching and use the problem-solving approach to teaching in order to present the unit. Now, let's reflect.

So this was probably the most frustrating lab to prepare for because I did not realize how much investment was required in thinking/cognitively preparing a problem that you would need to fully understand in order to guide your students in their own learning process. I also did not understand that this was intended to simply be the first day of the unit, thus making me stressed to believe I had to spend 5 hours on lesson plans (that I still wasn't proud of) for all lessons in this unit. I know that seems silly now, but I only did realize while trying to plan the lab that I was not prepared with enough knowledge of how to write a PSA lesson. However, maybe this is the challenge... figuring out what works best and thinking deeply about approaching your content is what takes the most time.

With that said, there was obviously much frustration in the preparation process. Also because I really wanted to use a real-life situation/problem to give the students rather than making up a scenario (which I am not that creative about anyways).

Seeing some other classmates present, I did realize how I might have changed my approach to planning the problem, but I still think my content was just a little tricky for making a PSA - biodiversity and issues of PA wildlife. So this was my problem solving lesson - I presented the students with the following statement:

Pennsylvania is home to an estimated 25,000 species of plants and animals. 800 of these species are rare, threatened, or endangered and at least 150 of these species have been lost from PA in recent history. Of that 25,000, mammals and birds make up only about 470 species. Within that 470 species of birds and mammals, 20 are endangered, 7 are threatened, and 1 is extirpated.

Pennsylvania has one of the highest land development rates in the U.S., even if our population growth is not nearly as dramatic. This development occurs outside urban centers, creeping into farm and forestland. In 1982, developed land covered about 10% of PA, but in 2003, it covered over 15% of the state, an increase of more than 50% in 20 years. 

I was intending for this statement to be a "situation to be improved" but it ended up being more of an opportunities/factors problem. Again, probably because I wasn't fully understanding of the problem solving approaches and their distinctions.

When actually presenting my PSA, I was not nearly as confident because the whole concept was still new and somewhat unfamiliar, so my teaching was not as high energy as normal. I also noticed that I was a little dry, even with such an engaging session as letting the students lead. I should always remember that it is about the students and their learning experience, not about my feelings or appearing as being successful in their eyes. I also realized the true difficulty that lies in allowing our students to think critically. How to we make people think deeply!?! Well, get into their heads. Find things that make them interested and ask "why is this important"? (another question I did not cover well in my lesson). I really highly believe in critical thinking in the classroom and love the concept of Inquiry Based Learning... but never realized how hard it is to work from scratch.

But yeah, we are here to learn, so I will continue to grow from these teaching labs and hopefully become a better PSA-writer/teacher!

Problem Solving... in teaching!

Okay, so we all know that when solving a problem, we apply a lot of previous knowledge, base understanding, and decision-making skills. However, did we all know that problem solving in teaching is a very effective tool to develop students' sociocultural strengths and constructivist domain? Yeah, those words are big for me too, but its okay. It basically means that, if we structure problem based learning properly, we can develop a student's ability to engage with others and build on previous learning/past experiences to solve real problems.
Little did I know before reading this week's readings - Problem Based Learning (PBL) includes the following categories:

1. Problem solving
2. Inquiry learning
3. Project-based teaching
4. Case studies

I don't know how I clumped those teaching methods previously, but now things are much clearer and I understand how I can utilize them as a teacher

Let's not forget as teachers, we must use problems that:

• provide new learning experiences
• provide new knowledge (or motivation to learn new knowledge)
• build on existing knowledge

And here's how we do it in real life vs. the classroom (classroom in parentheses):

1. Experience a provocative situation (interest approach)
2. Define the problem (objectives to be achieved, questions to be answered)
3. Seek data/info (problem solution)
4. Formulating possible solutions (problem solution - develop possible solutions, acquire new knowledge/skills, formulate conclusions and general principles)
5. Testing proposed solutions (testing solutions through application)
6. Evaluating the results (evaluation of solutions)

So what was the coolest thing I learned? 

Problem-solving in teaching can be done using two types of problems:

1. Well-structured problems = problems that have one clear solution, thus little declarative (factual) knowledge is needed and the structuring of these problems is easiest
2. Ill-structured problems = problems that have multiple/unknown/uncertain solutions and therefore require much more declarative knowledge, as well as procedural knowledge to decide upon the correct response and reason through it. These problems are more difficult to construct (by teachers) but have the most real-world application (transfer). 

You would think you wanted something with the word "well" in it rather than "ill" but in fact, we, as teachers, should constantly be trying to develop ill-structured problems for problem-solving in teaching, but ONLY if we provide the opportunity for the students to learn all the declarative knowledge they need to! 

I love how this dude (with the crazy earrings) addresses ill-defined problems as "gnarly" and "wicked" but how he closes with the simple satisfaction of how, using multiple disciplines, we can get through the problem and find out the best solution... but I would not recommend allowing your students to celebrate solving these problems by sitting on the couch and drinking a beer. 

Lab 3 - DEMO DAYS!

What did we do in my demo? Well, you may not think it is that relative to ag mechanics, but I'll tell you that there are certainly a lot of mechanics to understand in a DSLR camera and there are a lot of agricultural applications to photography... but really, we need to be able to understand equipment to use it, and many people do not know how to properly use a DSLR digital camera, but they are more often than not becoming a popular consumer item rather than your simple "point-and-shoot" camera.
So what did a simple, intro photography demo include? Well, I had to review some tricky terminology (see this dropboxed job operation sheet with vocab) before getting started, and I admit that it was a bit much and a bit too fast, and not a lot of "demonstrating" but given the nature of the activity, I thought it was important contextual info.
While it was a little disengaging with so much info, I do think my "students" learned something informationally new before even psychomotorally learning how to do something.
Classroom management wasn't too difficult, not that I recall, because I think the content was actually new to my cohort-members, distracting them from their roles ;) But I find that it can be difficult to manage the class when you are focusing on showing something or getting ONE student to show something.
One thing I do recall learning is how to try and apply this to what the students are doing in class/ag, especially as I TRANSITION from item to item in my lesson. It's important to make connections so that the students can place value in the content being taught.
For practice, it would be more helpful to have several cameras so that the students could simultaneously take photos, or pair up. This would depend on your program's resources and, hopefully, your school has some sort of photography class and a few cameras to use.
Above all, I really enjoyed this lesson/demo because it is something I am really passionate about - and while we have three types of passions (Dave Burgess, Teach Like a Pirate) - occupational, content, and personal - its a great place to be when you can align all three to allow your students to learn something new!!
OKAY now time for SHARING! Here are some photos that were taken by your peers in their demonstration practice :) Enjoy!

Emily? 

Annette... 

Annette again, I believe :) What a photographer!