Three Considerations in Designing Alternative Assessment

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Sharing by Dr. Lydia Yee

Dr. Lydia Yee has been teaching PSY2001 Biological Psychology, a core psychology course on the relationship between brain and behaviour, for six years. In the transition to adopting alternative assessment, she considered it important to consider the course load and assessment methods for students as they are also navigating a new online learning environment. Dr. Yee suggested three tips for re-designing the course work with consideration of assessment load, class interaction, and authenticity.

Dr. Lydia Yee has been teaching PSY2001 Biological Psychology, a core psychology course on the relationship between the brain and human behaviour, for six years. In the transition to alternative assessment, she felt it important to consider the course load and assessment methods for students, as they are also navigating a new online learning environment. Dr. Yee gave three tips for re-designing course work, which focus on assessment load, class interaction and authenticity.

To even out the assessment load, Dr. Yee pointed out that it is desirable to break assessments into smaller assignments to avoid overwhelming students. During the pandemic, students might be more stressed, as they are no longer in a campus learning environment and need to adapt to many changes in the learning mode. Breaking down major assessments into small assignments may help. These assignments can help students to follow the course more easily, and help instructors keep track of students’ progress and quickly identify and correct students’ misunderstandings. For example, to track students’ progress, Dr. Yee used Edpuzzle, a video app that allows instructors to add quizzes to video clips. Such quizzes allow students to check their understanding. Instructors can easily see the quiz results for the whole class, and based on the class’s performance, they can clarify concepts that students find difficult.

To facilitate class interaction, Dr. Yee connected online assignments with in-class discussions or collaborative work to motivate her students. Students were required to use Padlet to complete small assignments. Padlet allows students to ‘like’ and comment on their classmates’ posts, which enhances class interaction. To connect the assignments with in-class discussions, Dr. Yee chose popular student posts for discussion and posed guiding questions to students. Dr. Yee then used polls and Zoom’s breakout room function to arrange collaborative activities for students. She emphasised that it is necessary to set goals for students to achieve together in their discussions. Hence, she asked her students to summarise their opinions in a Google document and then present the ideas that they came up with to their classmates. After the group presentation, other students were required to provide feedback. To encourage truthful feedback, it was not tied to their classmates’ grades.

With authenticity in mind, Dr. Yee went beyond assigning essays to her students. In the most recent semester, Dr. Yee asked students to design a poster to explain a biological psychology concept to the community. The task required students to use their organisation and communication skills to translate scientific jargon into accessible language. Dr. Yee explained that completing authentic tasks like this sharpens students’ skills in communicating professional knowledge, which are desirable in any profession, even if the students do not go on to become professional psychologists. As many studies have suggested, authenticity not only includes employability, academic integrity and the development of professional skills, but also embraces other elements, such as the application of subject knowledge to the local community (Arnold, 2019; Sambell, McDowell & Montgomery, 2013). Designing authentic assessments for students might open up more opportunities to develop professional and generic skills.

Reference

Arnold, L. (2019). Unlocking the power of authentic assessment. DLTE ARISE lecture, Edinburgh Napier University, Nov 27. Slides and recording available (ENU staff only) at https://staff.napier.ac.uk/services/dlte/Pages/DLTE-Past-Events-201920.aspx, or slides from https://lydiaarnold.wordpress.com/

Sambell, K., McDowell, L., & Montgomery, C. (2013). Assessment for learning in higher education. Routledge.

Resource: https://www.eduhk.hk/lttc/asi/res-sharing-assessment.html

Delivering the University ePortfolio Course

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Sharing by Dr. Winnie Lam

The University ePortfolio (UePortfolio) is designed to make visible the connection between students’ educational journey and their own identity formation as university graduates / young professionals. The course also aims to enlighten students about ways of developing as a university graduate engaged in lifelong learning and dedicated to living a worthy life.

Dr. Winnie Lam has taught this course for five semesters since Semester 2 in 2016/17. This article describes her innovative approaches to guiding students through these assessments as they develop their UePortfolios.

In this course, Dr. Lam uses Padlet as a tool for discussion. In one class exercise, she showed a picture of a messy wardrobe to her students.

She then asked her students how they would tidy up the wardrobe. Students discussed their ideas in groups and shared them on Padlet. Through this in-class online activity, students exchanged ideas such as donating unwanted clothes and sorting clothes according to season, colour or type. Dr. Lam then extended this activity to the processes involved in putting together an ePortfolio. For instance, to tidy up a messy wardrobe, it is necessary to take out items and re-organise them. Everyone has a different way of organising or prioritising items. Regardless of the strategy, you must select, trim, and maintain the collection based on certain principles. Creating a UePortfolio is a similar process – you must select a theme, consider which experiences are relevant and organise them in your own way, according to your priorities.

In this course, students write a reflective entry on Week 6 and create an individual ePortfolio towards the end of the course to document and reflect on their formal and non-formal learning experiences. Dr. Lam pointed out that the reflective entry is a first attempt at, or precursor to, the final ePortfolio. After students submit their reflective entries, they have an individual and a group consultation with the instructor. These consultation sessions allow the instructor to encourage students to share more about their individual experiences (a divergent process), and then the instructor can help students narrow these down to specific themes (a convergent process) by posing guiding questions, comparing and contrasting examples from students, reviewing and analysing particular experiences, etc. Furthermore, trial marking of previous exemplars during group consultation gives students a better understanding of the requirements and marking criteria.

Dr. Lam shared that in her past consultations, she used tracked changes and made comments on the Word document of the students’ reflective entry during the face-to-face meetings. In this way, each student had a reliable record of thoughts, elaborations, and inspiration to refer to after discussion. Students from Dr. Lam’s classes reflected that the Word document with comments was very useful, as it helped them to recall, rethink, and re-organise the feedback that they received in the consultation. Many studies have emphasised the value of timely feedback for improving students’ performance (Huxham, 2007; Lynam & Cachia, 2018). Researchers (e.g., Hennessy & Forester, 2013) have also found that combining audio and written feedback can increase its positive effects.

After the individual consultation, students present to the class the themes chosen for their ePortfolio and the proposed evidence to be used. During the presentation, other students conduct a peer review. The instructor provides keywords to guide and inspire them to write good reviews. A sample guiding question is, ‘What things did the student do well?’ Peer-reviewers are asked to choose from phrases such as “audible speech,” “relevant theme and content,” and “good organisation with ample and clearly presented evidence.” The guiding questions and keywords help students analyse their peers’ work and give practical feedback. Students can also practice and develop their critical thinking and communication skills by reviewing their peers’ work. In previous reflections, instructors, and students found that the process of sending and receiving feedback is a core learning activity that encourages students to expand, explore and examine their knowledge and thoughts. Tools for feedback exchange can be simple, as they can include any method that allows instructors and students to record and share feedback, such as a face-to-face sharing session or an online learning forum (e.g., Moodle Forum).

Reference

Hennessy, C., & Forrester, G. (2014). Developing a framework for effective audio feedback: A case study. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(7), 777–789.

Huxham, M. (2007). Fast and effective feedback: Are model answers the answer? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 32(6), 601–611.

Lynam, S., & Cachia, M. (2018). Students’ perceptions of the role of assessments at higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(2), 223–234.

Resource: https://www.eduhk.hk/lttc/asi/res-sharing-eportfolio.html

Symposium: Alternative Assessment in Reality

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ational reference only. >

International Conference on Learning and Teaching 2020

The International Conference on Learning and Teaching 2020 organised by The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) was held on 2 – 4 December 2020. A symposium with the theme “Alternative Assessment in Reality” was conducted on 4 December 2020 as one of the conference sessions. There were four speakers who shared their experience on how they changed assessment methods to adapt to changes under the pandemic.

The online group photo

Mr. Dean C K Cox, a senior lecturer from the Department of Journalism of Hong Kong Baptist University, shared his experience of teaching Multimedia Journalism, which was a practical course about using multimedia to tell stories.

Before the pandemic, students learned how to use several professional hardware and software packages for their projects as assessments. Under the pandemic, most of his students are unable to come to the campus. Therefore, Mr. Cox redesigned the course content and assessments. He taught web-based software instead of the licensed software so that students can practice at home. Furthermore, Mr. Cox prepared extra teaching materials for students to learn how to use their available tools (e.g., smartphones) to create professional multimedia works.

Mr. Cox also used shared that he used Padlet as the main tool for students to submit the assignments and exchange their views. For instance, he created a “Wow! What!” session for students to share things that they discovered because of the course. In another Padlet page, Mr. Cox made use of the map function, and invited students to share their stories and location on so that they could get an idea of their classmates’ whereabouts. Some students who lived close to one another might meet up before coming back to the campus.

Mr. Dean C K Cox shared the “Wow! What?” session

Dr. Lam Wai Man Winnie, a lecturer from the Department of Mathematics and Information Technology of The Education University of Hong Kong, shared her teaching experience of the University ePortfolio course, which is a compulsory course for senior undergraduate students to reflect on their undergraduate learning journey, and develop their critical thinking and communication skills via the progress of preparing their ePortfolios. There are two main assessments in this course: a reflective entry and an ePortfolio. Dr. Lam shared serval online platforms and tools that she used for her class including Padlet, Canva, Form Assistant for Course System (FACS), and Moodle.

Dr. Lam used Padlet as a tool for in-class activities to inspire and encourage students to share their thoughts. For instance, Dr. Lam showed a messy wardrobe, and asked her students how they would tidy up the wardrobe. Students then discussed in groups and summarized their ideas on Padlet. Through this in-class online activity, students exchanged their strategies and Dr. Lam then connected their ideas to the way to organise episodes of experience in their learning journey into a thematic ePortfolio.

Dr Lam Wai Man Winnie shared the website she used for inspiring students’ critical thinking

The third sharing was delivered by Dr. Li Kristen Yuanxi, a lecturer from the Department of Computer Science of Hong Kong Baptist University. Dr. Li brought out the idea that assessment can be fun and enjoyable for students by sharing the experiences of two distinct courses: a General Education Course and a Business Core Course. Due to the pandemic, she re-designed the assessment load and methods for each course to create a comfortable and fun learning community for students. She replaced the summative assessments (the mid-term and the final exam) with formative assessments (weekly reflections). She found that students enjoyed these changes and were more engaged.

Dr. Li also shared the “SPA” method she used for assessment, which refers to three assessment dimensions: self, peer, and authority. In her E-Business Technology course, she asked student to reflect what they have learnt, and what they appreciated about themselves after they finished the project and received feedback from the instructors and peers. For the peer assessment, Dr. Li used online white board to share all students’ work to the class. Students could see all classmates’ presentation videos and send feedback to them. A guide was provided for students to give both quality and quantity comments. Last but not least, the instructors should take the main role of authority in assessments. Besides assessing students’ subject knowledge, Dr. Li paid attention on project management skills by tracking students’ group diversity, time management and collaboration.

Dr Li Kristen Yuanxi shared her teaching experience and the elements of her courses

The last sharing session of the symposium, titled “Joys & Pains in Designing Alternative Assessments” was presented by Dr. Yee Ting Sum Lydia, an assistant professor from the Department of Psychology of The Education University of Hong Kong. Dr. Yee suggested three tips for re-designing the course work with consideration of assessment load, class interaction, and authenticity. She illustrated her tips by sharing the experience of the Biological Psychology class.

Under the pandemic, students might be more stressed as they have lost the campus learning environment and need to adapt to many changes in the learning mode. Dr. Yee pointed out that it is desirable to break down the assessments into small assignments to prevent overwhelming students. These assignments could serve formative purposes to help students to follow the course more easily, and to help instructors keep track of students’ progress so that the instructors can identify and clarify students’ misunderstanding at an earlier stage. For example, Dr. Yee used Edpuzzle to track and gain understanding on students’ progress. Edpuzzle is a video app that allows instructors to add quizzes in different parts of video clips. Using quizzes as small assignments help students to check their understanding, and instructors can also get reports on the quizzes’ results of the whole class easily. Based on the performance of the class, instructors can clarify and address concepts that students find hard to grapple with.

To facilitate class interaction, Dr. Yee connected assignments online with in-class discussions or collaborative work to motivate her students. She used Padlet as a tool for students to upload small assignments. Padlet allows students to “like” and comment on their classmates’ posts, which enhances the class interaction. Connecting the assignments with in-class discussions, Dr. Yee chose some popular student posts as a topic and posed guiding questions for students to discuss. Dr. Yee then used polls and breakout room functions of Zoom to arrange collaborative activities for students. She emphasized that it is necessary to set goals for students to achieve together in their discussion. Hence, she asked her students to summarize their opinions into a google document, then shared and presented the google document to their classmates. After the group presentation, others need to provide feedback. Their feedback doesn’t directly affect their classmates’ grades.

With authenticity in mind, Dr. Yee went beyond assigning essays to her students. In this semester, Dr. Yee asked students to design a poster to explain a professional term or concept to the community. The task required students’ organization and communication skills to interpret the professional language into a public intelligible language. Dr. Yee explained that designing authentic tasks like this would help students who may not work in an academic environment in the future. Designing authentic assessments for students might open up more opportunities to develop professional as well as generic skills in context.

Last but not least, Dr. Yee mentioned that spreading out the assessment due dates can avoid students being overwhelmed by the overcrowding of assessments at the end of the semester. It also allows instructors to provide progressive feedback.

Dr Yee Ting Sum Lydia shared an example of the poster design assignment

Resource: https://www.eduhk.hk/lttc/asi/symposium.html