How does the "logic" of assessment influence the logic of education?

The logic of assessment has a great influence on the logic of education. If we look at traditional education in the “old-school” whereby the student is dictated to by the teacher, they have to learn a certain syllabus and then at the end of it they have to revise for and take an exam to test if they have learnt the module. This approach means that the students’ grade is based on one day and essentially sets the student up to fail. What if you are ill that day? What if you did not sleep well? What if you have a bad memory? Essentially, this assessment approach tests memory not learning.

In the 'Exams measure memory, not learning' Youtube video, the student against this notion says:

“If I am able to cite four judges names in 20 cases and add a couple of principles in there, and one of my colleagues is only able to cite three of them and maybe five cases, I look better. That’s not because I understand the content better, it’s because I have a better memory.”

What Benjamin Bloom suggested in his Mastery Learning theory was an approach to “push the achievement curve to the right” through optimal instruction. And how do we do that? Dr. Cope suggests:

“We'd allow flexibility which is, students could perhaps to some degree, go at their own pace. We'd create group work where students help each other. We do one-to-one instruction, we give some students special attention.”

This allows students to be assessed and to develop throughout the duration of the module ad preventing their final grade on depending on just one day. Assessment in turn becomes teaching whereby the student is assessing/seeing other students’ work and learning new ideas which maybe they had not thought of or had missed or misunderstood and vice versa, they also have the opportunity to receive feedback from their peers. One technology which allows this is Scholar. As Cope mentions in his video 'The New School: Learning Analytics in Scholar':

“So instead of this classical assessment scenario, where you get your assignment back, it's B+, you've been a bad person. You're going to promise to be better for the rest of your life. We've given an environment where you can get enough feedback, and sufficiently concrete feedback, from your peers and from the professor, who's on top of what's going on, or the teacher, who's on top of what's going on. And such that your work can be brought up to standard before you've got B+”

This method provides on-going dialogue and discussion between peers and facilitates Benjamin Bloom’s idea of optimal instruction where the students support each other.

In this modern, technology-driven world we are living in, we need to rethink traditional assessment approaches and utilize the new tools we have at our fingertips. Having access to tools such as Scholar means that we no longer have to rely on memory-based assessments which are not a true assessment of knowledge and we can instead use this on-going feedback approach which opens a dialogue and encourages students to continuing discussing and developing as they go- which will result in a deeper learning.

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-U-o-dR09Y&ab_channel=torontodebating

https://www.coursera.org/learn/ubiquitouslearning/lecture/mWGcI/the-new-school-learning-analytics-in-scholar

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Describe and evaluate an innovative assessment approach or technology.

An innovative assessment approach and technology would be the Scholar platform as this platform takes advantage of technology in order to overcome the limitations that Benjamin Bloom’s theory had in the past. As Cope mentions in his video ‘The Old School: The Mastery Learning Perspective’:

“…in research that's been done around Mastery Learning without technology, it's been shown that in fact it works. But the trouble is that it's a lot work.”

With Scholar, each student is able to upload multiple drafts of their work to the platform and is able to receive peer feedback. Due to the fact that it is peers assessing them and not just one teacher, they are able to gain different perspectives and opinions from multiple students which helps them develop during the course. This also frees-up the teachers time and allows them to focus on the areas and students that they can see need more help. They are able to see which areas and students should be focused on, by using analytics. For example the image below, analytics provide insights into how much feedback they have taken on, their peer review rating, self-reviews therefore the teacher can see in red which students have been flagged up.

Another advantage is that it encourages reflexive learning and is really student-centric and allows them to be knowledge producers rather than consumers. By commenting and assesing one another’s work, they are creating this on-going way of working, rather than just getting a grade at the end of an assignment and being unable to improve. This is a much more realistic approach as in turn you are alos learning life skills and soft skills such as being able to take criticism as well as being able to give constructive criticism to your peers.

References

https://cgscholar.com/