Assessment and Feedback – Professional Teacher training
Overview
All groups
Like always we had three group presentations on the topics of assessment and feedback.
- (Team Bastu) What are the goals and intended outcomes of assessment and feedback in vocational education?
- (Team Owl) What is the difference of assessing competence and assessing the learning process?
- (Team Tree) What are the most common assessment methods, how do they work and differ from each other?
This is the overview and reflection by a member of team Tree.
The other groups covered the definition of assessment and feedback. They also covered goals of assessment and outcomes of assessment. Team owl discussed about learning competence and learning process. It was an interesting discussion to listen to and take part in the activities. They mentioned that grades is a type of assessment whereas, in the Bastu team discussion I understood that grade is not a form of assessment. Assessment simply means teacher is assessing the learning that is happening among students (Straková, Z., & Cimermanová, I. 2018). So, then I want to know if grades are assessment type. Well I asked this question and the discussion lead to conclusion or at least in my understanding that grades are used to assess but only at the end. So they are one type of assessment. Team Bastu either did not understand my question about grade or they were not prepared. Team Owl member helped me to understand the difference at the end.
In terms of our own groups preparation and delivery we divided our work in the beginning. So that every member has something to do. Three of the members did the initial research. I did the summarising and last member made the presentation. I also added few slides in the presentation. I realised that even though it was a detailed and easy to understand presentation I could have practiced it a bit.
I presented last. The owl and bastu group mostly covered definitions and assessment methods already so, I just summarized first half of my presentation so to have less repetition in all presentations. If there is a lot of repetition then people stops paying attention. Doing so, I had more time to do the discussion. I took advantage of that and I asked the audience individually to talk about their favourite assessment methods that they have used personally and give examples. Initially it was 10 minute discussion planned but I had time so almost it went double the initial time. It helped me to keep the audience active and take part as active participants. After the discussion i discussed about assessment methods and how they work and what are the differences in different methods and in which situations certain methods can be useful. The presentation was done in the allotted time and it received self initiated questions as well.
Reference:
Straková, Zuzana, and Ivana Cimermanová. “Critical thinking development—A necessary step in higher education transformation towards Sustainability.” Sustainability 10.10 (2018): 3366.
Reflection
Self initiated questions shows that my presentation helped create environment where audience were feeling easier to talk and comment. it only happened once but in the limited time and in an online environment I would think that it is a good sign. I feel happy and I will continue to practice more and keep the audience active and help them participate more. I usually give time to my audience to ask a question and i do not put pressure on them. I just give them time and it is the peer pressure that makes all of the audience members to take part in the conversations. I will keep on practicing this skill and keep on improving it and keep on learning from others.
In our group I think that we are participating more and sharing more. The research phase gave me enough material to summarize. Even my summary text was enough to have half hour presentation. If my group keep it like this I am sure it will be lot easier in the future to come up with the data. If I can get the data and presentation done in time then i will have more time to practice my presentations. I really do not like to read slides and with more practice i will be able to deliver better and without reading slides. SO this is where I am right now.