I have been thinking about assessment and how to make it more enjoyable for the students. Anne suggested that it is pretty boring for the students to be continually presented with the same sort of "write a report on ..." or "answer these questions" type assessment and of course, she is absolutely correct. But how do we achieve more interesting assessments and still meet the requirements of awarding bodies?
Could we ask students to create (and deliver) a presentation about the 'fetch execute cycle' for instance? This would not only be assessing their knowledge but also developing their core skills. Why not? Do you think we could use blogs, podcasts or wikis for assessment purposes? That would certainly be different.
Les showed me a good quote yesterday which was along the lines of "tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, involve me and I will understand". He then added "could we get the students involved in how they should be assessed". An interesting thought! Would they better appreciate what it is they are trying to demonstrate if they had to think about how they could 'prove' their knowledge? I think perhaps they would!
1 comment:
I think this is a great idea. This approach is not only more interesting and enjoyable for the students, but for Lecturers too!
My daughter, Lynsey, used to have an SDL(student directed learning) class when she was at university. Each student was allocated various topics which the class had to learn about. The students had to reasearch the topics then present them to the rest of the class, using any method they wished, e.g. a talk, Powerpoint, a website, handouts or a combination. Before they had to do the research they were also asked how they were going to go about it. Afterwards, the Lecturer then gave group feedback as to the content and accuracy of each presentation.
I think this could be an idea for us to use, for either formative or summative assessment, promoting the students' self-directed learning skills in the process. Fiona, to use your example of the fetch execute cycle, we could ask the students to create a presentation (with animation!) and explain it to the class.
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