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Module 2
Lecture Notes - Part 2a

 

Assessment, Resources, Alignment

A. Introduction

Well-designed learning objectives drive identification, evaluation, and selection of the necessary instructional resources as well as the design of assessments that will demonstrate student acquisition of the knowledge and skills outlined by these objectives.

Types of assessment

(after Wiggins and McTighe, 2005)

• Performance Tasks
  Performance tasks are at the heart of learning and assessment and are meant to be real-world challenges in the thoughtful and effective use of knowledge and skills; context-driven and authentic tests of understanding.
• Criteria Referenced Assessment (quizzes, test, prompts)
  These provide instructors and students with feedback on how well the facts and concepts are being retained and, assuming inclusion of open-ended questions/problems that prompt students to think critically, how well these facts and concepts are being understood.
• Unprompted Assessment and Self-Assessment (observations, dialogues, self-tests, etc.)

Questions guiding assessment design

Online assignments must always incorporate information-application tasks along with information-retrieval tasks. Otherwise, they will not be assessing understanding but simply the students' ability to efficiently find information online.

Acquiring knowledge

• What enabling knowledge (facts/concepts/principles) and skills (procedures/ competencies) will students need to effectively accomplish the desired learning objectives?
• What are the resources that best capture and communicate to the students the necessary knowledge and skills?
• Through what activities will students interact with the chosen resources in order to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills?

Demonstrating knowledge 

• What types of choices, distinctions, or discriminations should students be able to make in order to demonstrate knowledge and skill acquisition?
• What kinds of evidence will help students assess their progress with respect to the learning objectives? What kinds of evidence will help instructors identify gaps in learning so that they and their students can determine what to tackle next?

Assisting knowledge acquisition and demonstration

• When will students need coaching and what coaching/teaching method will be most appropriate?
• When will students need to take responsibility of their learning and how can this be facilitated?
   

B. Assignments as Assessed Learning Activities

Effective assessment should be closely aligned with the learning objectives and be embedded in the design of a course rather than be auxiliary to it (Angelo and Cross, 1993).
DOTS takes this approach a step further with assignments that integrate student-resource interactions (i.e. learning activities) with assessment of whether or not the learning objectives supported by these resources have been accomplished.

In other words, rather than presenting students with teaching resources, followed by learning activities and then tests on the content of these resources, the proposed design presents students with challenges through which materials will be introduced, and understanding of the materials will be, at once, achieved, demonstrated, and assessed.

This approach highly motivates students to seriously address the course materials by

• clearly illustrating what they will be able to accomplish with their new knowledge and skills and
• tightly linking effort to reward through the introduction of a graded activity during rather than subsequent to student interaction with the course materials.

Assignment drafting and selection of appropriate supporting resources flow directly out of well-designed (i.e. clear, student-centered, and measurable) learning objectives which, in turn, are statement versions of a course's or course module's essential questions.
All assignments in DOTS and in the film music course reviewed in the previous module provide examples of tight interdependence and alignment among essential questions, objectives, assignments, and resources. This conceptual alignment and the primacy of assignments, when it comes to how a course is presented to the students, is also reflected in the assignment-centric design of both courses, with all necessary resources being directly linked to a graded learning activity. Do spend some time scanning through the assignments of both these courses.
Reminder: access information for the film course is available in Module 1, Assignment 2.

Example 1
 
Essential Questions
    • What are the main indicators of good health?
    • What health interventions are within a nurse's scope of practice?
 
Learning Objectives
    • Distinguishing between normal and abnormal diagnostic test results
    • Diagnosing presence and nature of illness through interpretation of test
      results
    • Drafting a care plan that addresses both the illness and the patient as a
      whole
 
Assignments
    • Use health standards related to gender, age, and race to assess the health
      state of patients based solely on medical records (e.g. laboratory tests,
      stress tests, history, etc.)
    • Diagnose precise nature of illness based solely on medical test results
    • Draft an efficient and effective care plan that takes into account current
      diagnosis as well as patient medical history and general lifestyle

Example 2
 
Learning Objectives
    • Distilling the key concepts presented in a research study
    • Identifying the main assumptions underlying the study
    • Placing a study and its results within the context of related literature
 
Assignments
    Students will be answering the following questions for every assigned
    reading:
    • Who is the article written for? Is its style/content appropriate for the
      intended audience?
    • What are the main questions the study attempts to answer?
    • Is the approach exemplified in the reading internally consistent? Is it
      inclusive of most aspects relevant to the topic?
    • Has the related literature been properly addressed?
    • How do the methods of the study in question compare to the relevant
      methodological standards?
    • Does the concluding section accomplish what the introduction set out to
      do?
    • What are the assumptions underlying the study? Could there have been
      alternative approaches to the same research question(s)? Are alternative
      interpretations of the presented results possible?

Courses often include long-term learning goals that are not directly assessable (e.g. “to create life-long learners,” or “to encourage long-term involvement in the arts”) and cannot therefore be converted into learning objectives. In such cases, the course materials and assignments must reflect an approach that both addresses and supports these goals, however indirectly. If this is not possible, such goals should not be communicated to the students at all.
 

C. Aligning Objectives, Assignments, and Resources

 
To get an idea of what alignment entails, think of the learning objectives as the course destination and of the assignments and resources as the means of reaching the destination and of assessing how effectively and efficiently you've made the trip.
Course objective, resources, and assignments must work together in order to effectively support learning. For example, if an objective states that students should be able to construct a well-written essay, a multiple-choice test would not be an appropriate assignment (i.e. it would not be well aligned with the objective). At the same time, measurable objectives are useful only if students seriously engage with the resources that will help them achieve those objectives. The Quality Matters rubric helps instructors determine whether the provided assignments and accompanying resources are deep and comprehensive enough to help students achieve the stated objectives, while supporting alignment among objectives, assignments, and resources.
 

Example of alignment between objectives and assignments
(adapted from Palloff and Pratt, 2003)
 

 

   

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Continue to Part 2b - Assignment Frequency and Design