Assessment Tools and Feedback

Taken from http://lesson.website/how-to-make-an-effective-missing-pet-poster/

Assessment Tools and Feedback The Poster Making Assignment

By Prof. Devika S. Pathak School of Fashion, Styling & Textiles Pearl Academy, India Wednesday, February 24, 2016 Post 220

Prof. Pathak is indeed trying out new ways of involving learners and take control of it; learner autonomy, -no matter what one is teaching-, needs to be stressed to help students discover their way to build their own knowledge, skills, and competencies.

And since teaching is a journey, Prof. Devika S. Pathak is unfolding her discoveries and sharing them with us at her workplace in India: Pearl Academy. Reading her accounts can make us teaching professional consider alternative and authentic ways of assessing one’s learners.

This week has been a very successful one wherein I have been able to understand and reflect on the importance of feedback, both for the tutor and the student. The various tools or methods that can be adopted for feedbacks were very informative. The sharing’s of other tutors also makes you aware of the versatility of formative and summative feedbacks in all subjects. Another aspect that I understood clearly was the importance and ease of using a rubric for assessments. The grades

and feedbacks done via rubric have clarity in expressing the areas, which were well displayed by the students or areas needed more research or explorations.

The methods of assessing students through formatives, summative and selfreflections help create a deeper learning in all students. A formative feedback is useful when given to a student before the end of a module so that tutors are able to assess the level of understanding and the clarity gained by student. Also in some cases it may help the tutors to realize that some concepts taught, haven’t been completely understood by the students. In either of these scenarios, it helps to gain insight into the problem areas and rectify the concerns. So if the student has missed out on key areas while doing an assignment he /she are made aware of the same so that it does not reoccur in the future. And, if the tutor has realized that a particular part has not been clearly understood by the class, they can re-design the explanation of the concepts to the class with more examples and case-studies to bring about clarity.

Addressing the problems at the formative level allows the tutor to be assured that the summative will be more progressive. Since the summative takes place at the end of the module and is a culmination of all formatives, it allows the tutors to see the growth or decline in a student’s learning and assess them fairly. Also, formative feedbacks allows the scope for self- reflection for the students and the tutor and accordingly they can strengthen the weak areas or/and clear the muddy areas.

My learnings have made me more interactive and involving as a tutor. Earlier I used to assess my students only on college specified assessment dates, but now I have been able to incorporate many smaller formative forms of assessments in my class. I do this either by conducting a quiz, a group presentation or a written essay of 600-700 words. This helps me to gauge the learnings of my students and also reflect on my teaching methodologies. In case a concept or a brief is not well

understood, it allows me to address it there and then before going to the next concept or topic.

The new assessment tool as a formative I have added is of making posters, which incorporates visuals and a brief text. It has been enjoyable for the students as well, since they like to design the layout and express themselves creatively. They are free to use actual swatches of fabrics, self-clicked photographs, illustrations or CAD skills to make these posters. These posters are put up in class for everyone to view.

For all these new activities that I incorporated as mini assignments I faced certain challenges – 1) in the group projects, all members did not contribute equally and the absentees definitely would not have the similar learnings from the task.

Later the absent students were asked to their presentations individually; maybe the task of doing it alone would deter them from future non-participation. 2) While writing the text document many of them copied text from the Internet because they found it easier to copy and paste, unfortunately many of the facts regarding crafts and their origin was not authentic. And so the learning was not complete. Later the concerned students were asked to refer to library books for more authentic information. Researching from books encourages the students to read more, to

decide what to write, and how much to write.

The poster making assignment was very successful, and each student put up their creative foot forward. Their work displayed clarity in expressing themselves and that further helped me to understand their learnings. So overall, the experiments were worth trying and helped bring some new insights in the sessions.

Devika, thanks for your contributions to the blog as a guest writer.