All of you who are reading
me know why this is a very suitable time to consider how teachers can develop
Digital Formative Assessment (DFA). Undoubtedly, online learning offers a unique opportunity
to rethink our approach to assessment. The main reason why educators should reconsider the way they assess students nowadays is that research has proven that digital
learning and assessment have the potential to support more powerful student
learning.
Hattie, for example, in his widely cited review of meta-analyses in
education research finds significant effect sizes for a range of formative
assessment methods in ICT-based environments (e.g. intelligent tutoring
systems, formative evaluation, and so on) (1)
We may try to pinpoint some of the advantages of assessing students through using different
digital learning environments:
• it offers rapid feedback
and scaffolding of further steps for learning at an appropriate level of
difficulty
• it allows for learners’
choices, which leads to personalising learning and increasing intrinsic motivation)
• it includes mobile tools to
support assessment of ‘anytime, anywhere’ learning
• it is beneficial to students with special needs (for example, students can simply touch the
screen for the answer instead of writing it. Speech to text is also another
great option and a great solution to people facing difficulties in essay
writing)
• it supports collective
engagement in problem solving in small groups or in massive multiplayer online
platforms
• it provides with opportunities for
self- and peer-assessment
The question is: how
can teachers develop DFA? I would say there is still a need to
train teachers on how to incorporate online methods in teaching and
assessing. From this blog post, I would like to share a
powerful review on the literature of DFA written by
Janet Looney last September 2019. I am sure that you
will not be disappointed when you find a great deal of examples of
technologies used to support DFA.
Next seminar session we will
discuss the broad range of practices included in DFA . Online assessment, in
essence, should support the assessment of student progress and provide
information to be used as feedback in order to modify the teaching and
learning activities in which students are engaged.
I hope we will meet
very soon so that we can interact face to face and
discuss DFA in our CLIL classrooms.
References:
(1) Hattie's https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/
Suggested Bibliography:
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (2018).
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice
Taylor and Francis online
Journal
Volume 25, 2018 - Issue 6
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