25/05/2017 PBL Assessment Fit for Purpose Ingrid Scholten, Ed.D. Flinders University Overview • Why focus on assessment? • What do we want from assessment in PBL? • What are the challenges? • How can assessment be used to promote learning? • What are some of the key features? • How can effective processes be sustained? • What is programmatic assessment?
25/05/2017 Why PBL? • It works! • Improved performance when compared with traditional curricula Strobel & Van Barneveld, 2009 • Generates a stimulating and challenging educational environment • “Hard Fun” Barrett, 2004; Papert, 2002 • Students take charge of their learning • Facilitates positive attitudes to learning (meta analysis: Demirel & Dagyar, 2016) • ? Improved metacognition • Authentic materials from day one • Promote skills required for future practice • Communication skills, interpersonal skills, teamwork, problem solving, reasoning, critical thinking, independent responsibility
25/05/2017 Why focus on assessment? • Assessment is viewed by the students as the driver of learning • Regardless of • Intended LOs • Curriculum design • Nature of content • Teaching excellence • Assessment is powerful • Influences what and how students learn • Engage, include and retain students • Stimulate them to take a deep approach to learning (Sambell, 2016 ) • Source of greatest student dissatisfaction (Soilemetzidis et al., 2014) • Academic stress disrupts cortical plasticity; hinders learning (Concerto et al., 2017) Why is it especially important for PBL? • Learning outcomes in PBL include not only skills and knowledge, but attitude and disposition • PBL facilitates development of this “way of being” • Far‐reaching effects; students • Acquire knowledge and skills • Integrate what they have learned • Form their identities – personal, professional and academic • Measuring/assessing “attitude” and “disposition” is challenging • Traditional testing culture, with high stakes exams • Inconsistent with PBL • Continuous and reiterative student participation
25/05/2017 What’s wrong with the status quo? • Traditional testing culture • Heavily reliant on psychometric models in test development • Strongly influenced by notions of objectivity and fairness • Traditional assessment tools and practices limited in scope • Test predominantly disciplinary or declarative knowledge • Drive teaching for assessment • Treat assessment as a separate, post‐teaching activity • Focus on individual achievement • Focus on artificial constraints, such as prescribed duration; high stakes, big summative final exam • Assess only the learning product Why do we buy into it? • Insidious contextual factors • Spiral down to teachers and students, maintaining the status quo • (Contrived) declining resources, pressure for increased research productivity and less time for teaching and student interaction • Increasing class sizes • Computer‐aided marking • Low‐level questions easier to design and “more objective” • Concerns about declining standards • Caution re changes to assessment policies, innovative assessments • Increased formal legal requirements • Domination properties of traditional assessment • Teachers maintain power, authority and control • Censorship – exams used to define what knowledge is worthy of acquiring
25/05/2017 What do we want from assessment in PBL? • All assessment should • Contribute to helping students to learn and succeed • Inform both students and teachers • Communicate assessment criteria and standards • Permit planning of future learning activities • Be diverse, inclusive and responsive • Offer choice and flexibility • Assess both product and processes • Encompass knowledge, skills and dispositions • Measure multidimensional aspects of competencies • Provide prompt and constructive feedback • Allow access to tools or resources used in real life • Interesting and authentic • Avoid time pressure • Involve multiple assessments cf single • Assessment in PBL should • Be aligned with course/module objectives/outcomes • Be authentic • Assess process‐based professional activity • Reflect learners’ development from novice to expert* • Include student self‐assessment and reflection Macdonald & Savin‐Baden, 2004 *Supported by a variety of taxonomies/frameworks
25/05/2017 What is curriculum alignment? Biggs, 1996; Biggs & Tan, 2011 What is authentic assessment? • Authenticity • Tasks have realistic value • Question of credibility; validity; fidelity; competence • Performance, or holistic assessment • Underlying motivator for active student engagement and involvement • Promotes understanding • Students develop their personal and professional identities • See the relevance and meaning of the assessment • Engaged cognitively, but also affectively • All disciplines can embed authenticity into assessment tasks
25/05/2017 • Authentic assessment is not about reliability • It’s about making a judgement of a student’s competence • The tasks are often complex and open ended • Decisions are frequently based on multiple scores and assessors • Avoid pretence • If construed by students as artificial, may have unintended consequences • Focus on the most salient characteristics of learning (LOs) • Assessment should become increasingly “authentic” across the program • Designing authentic assessments • Match real‐world tasks • Create products • Relatively undefined and open to multiple interpretations and solutions • But with clear, comprehensible criteria and standards • Collaborative • Enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning • Encourage students to adopt diverse perspectives and roles • Weave summative assessment seamlessly throughout the program in ways that reflect real‐world evaluation processes (Baartman, Prins, Kirschner and van der Vleuten, 2007; Lombardi, 2007)
25/05/2017 Examples of authentic assessments • Plans and models • Designs • Reports • Case history/interview; assessment; session notes; discharge or transfer summary … • Lab report • Literature searches and reviews • Care plans; session plan • Evidence‐based questions; critical appraisals • Applications • Funding; employment • Decision‐making activities • E.g. shortlisting candidates • Employment; waiting lists • Presentations • Case study; conference poster; platform presentation • Individual; group • Portfolios • More interesting to mark, too!
25/05/2017 How do we facilitate lifelong learning skills and dispositions? • Self‐regulated learning • Active control and monitoring by students of aspects of their own learning • Important to develop • Metacognition • Thinking about the contents and processes of one’s mind (Winnie & Azevedo, 2014) • Critical for self‐regulated learning • Reflection • Self‐regulation and critical reflection promote autonomy and self‐directed learning skills (Knight & York, 2003; Tan, 2007) • Explicit reflection activities prompt consideration of a learning event • Such “mindfulness” facilitates the capacity to make informed judgement, valuable to future learning (Boud, 2007) • Learning is an iterative process • Requires social participation ++ and interactions • Sequential formative assessments • Engage students in an active, inclusive social space • Students learn the practices of their disciplines or professions • Facilitates learning from mistakes/errors • Mistakes are forms of feedback that “something is wrong” • Offer feedforward to students about why it is incorrect and how to improve and progress • Feedforward • Provided by peers and teachers, and students themselves
25/05/2017 • Integrative assessments provide students with opportunities to • Engage with meaningful tasks that have inherent worth • Define standards and expectations in their responses • Make judgements about their own learning or performance • Track and analyse their approaches to responding to a problem, issue, situation or performance • Integrate prior or current feedback into their response • Be rewarded for the quality of their analysis of their metacognitive abilities, rather than factual knowledge or specific performance (Crisp, 2012, p. 41) What is the role of feedback? • Feedback is critical in the development of students’ self‐regulated learning 1. Helps clarify good performance 2. Facilitates development of reflection and self‐assessment 3. Delivers high‐quality information to students 4. Encourages dialogue around learning 5. Encourages positive motivational beliefs and self‐esteem 6. Provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance 7. Provides information to teachers Nicol & Macfarlane‐Dick, 2006
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