SPANZ Presentation This presentation is bookended by two whakatauki. The first is: Te manu ka kai i te miro, n ō na te ngahere Te manu ka kai i te m ā tauranga, n ō na te ao The bird that partakes of the berry, his is the forest The bird that partakes of knowledge, his is the world I will return to "Qualify for the future world" later but thank you for the opportunity to address you again. In the last 12 months NZQA has been doing a lot of thinking and investigating into the best way that we can implement digital assessment in the work that we do. We have been talking with a lot of you and shaping our thinking in response. What I hope to do today is to build on last year’s address by giving you more specifics around the framework I presented in 2014 and to provide you with an insight into NZQA’s journey and our plans moving forward, because our plans are all about co-creating with you. Let me back up and start with one student’s experience. Arran is not yet an adult, but he's in charge of his educational ‘learning journey’. His school has fully engaged with the digital opportunity and made a series of significant changes to both its physical learning environment and also the pedagogical approach of its teachers. Each day Arran scrolls through the signposts of his ‘learning journey’, a list of about 14 tasks that are set weekly. He has to submit his responses by their deadline, mostly online through Google Docs - but he decides how much time each one needs, what help he requires from his teachers and when he'll fit them in around other small-group discussions in his other subjects Consulting a ‘Task Master’ type programme that shows his results, he notes that a teacher has returned a task, asking for more evidence from him to demonstrate that he has grasped the appropriate level of learning. “The best part of the new approach was being able to learn to work things out for yourself" he said. "And you get to do more one-on-one stuff with your teachers, and people at the same stage of learning that you are". 2020 In order to respond to the way students are learning, NZQA’s journey of transformation to digital assessment is underway and we intend that the changes we make to our assessment will parallel the change in teaching and learning within secondary school classrooms of a similar nature to that of Arran’s school. Digital assessment will be a success only if students have access to a device as and when needed for teaching and learning, that is aligned to the appropriate pedagogical approach taken by teachers in the classroom. Many schools have realised the necessity of turning their
20 th century classrooms into 21 st century learning spaces with the associated pedagogical change. We know that several, if not many of you are leaders of schools that have made significant progress in using technology as the catalyst for transforming teaching and learning and a significant element in NZQA’s journey is to tap into the expertise and experience in schools and provide a means of sharing this across the sector. 2015 will be the year we really start to make more tangible progress in digital assessment that is more 'visible' to learners and teachers, and it will start to feel more real for them. So I am talking to you today because this digital pedagogy is transformative and system wide. It impacts us all and we need to work in partnership if we are to have a seamless approach. Qualify for the future world As NZQA has continued our Future State work we paused and thought hard about why we do what we do in the areas of assessment in the senior secondary school sector and the quality assurance work we do in the tertiary sector. We believe what we are on about, can be encapsulated by the beacon statement: “Qualify for the future world”. Te manu ka kai i te miro, n ō na te ngahere. Te manu ka kai i te m ā tauranga, n ō na te ao. The bird that partakes of the berry, his is the forest. The bird that partakes of knowledge, his is the world. Our education system must enable students to be successful in a borderless and digital world. Skills developed, and qualifications offered, must reflect the current and future needs of employers and society, if New Zealanders and NZ Inc are to be successful. Your role is critical and NZQA acts in support of that. In my career it has been a privilege to work in two sectors- health and education - where what we do matters – a lot! And to work with committed professionals who care, and are willing to go the extra mile. With much of the work still ahead of us, we are pleased to confirm a partnership with N4L (Network for Learning) who are working with us on our journey of digital transformation. In just over two years, N4L have rolled out their Managed Network with excellent performance, reliability and security. They have also launched, and continue to develop, the portal “Pond” into a tool that is becoming acknowledged as fundamentally important to the embedding of digital practice and online collaboration in New Zealand. Our goals We are working with N4L and classroom teachers to develop and make accessible, through Pond, a range of digital assessment resources that teachers will be able to use in their classrooms. Pond is the ideal platform for the easy sharing of resources and allows for the type of authentic engagement we need to successfully navigate the fast moving pace of educational change.
From Pond, teachers will be able to find the Quality Assured Assessment Materials they need right alongside NZQA Approved materials and other related content. And, teachers can organise this material in a way that makes sense to them. It is hoped that this will reduce the time and effort required of teaching staff to manage resources while, at the same time, contributing to a wider community of practice. I would like to encourage you, your leadership teams and your teachers to participate in Pond by sharing resources in order to build a genuine community of digital practice across the sector. What this means for internal assessment This year we are focussing on the sharing of current digital internal assessment practice. We want to see a thousand flowers blooming on Pond. Why? • We know that excellent practice already exists which will enable a co-creation approach (subject associations, schools and teachers) – several Subject Associations have already indicated a willingness to work with us • Starting with Internal Assessment, will allow learners, community stakeholders, and educators to become familiar with what is being done in internal digital assessment prior to the introduction of digital external examinations. • The timeframe will also allow for some evolving technologies to mature, so we can ensure that the best “fit-for-purpose” and “fit-for-format” technologies are going to be used for external assessment. Moderation We will be expanding our digital moderation processes for External Moderation. In 2014, 48 schools made use of NZQA’s digital moderation processes and were able to provide the moderator with access to the student material online. This enabled effective moderation of standards where the student material was developed digitally without the necessity of a labour intensive paper based moderation submission process. 2015 will be characterised by more efficiency gains in the moderation process through the increased use of online functions as we step into more comprehensive opportunities for online moderation. External assessment We aim to have some online digital examinations in 2018. Our thinking is around an online examination for 2-3 subjects that lend themselves to comfortably making the transition from paper to online. This year we intend to use the online internal assessment activities to look for synergies where we can leverage out elements that can be used in external assessment - we want to learn from what you are already doing.
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