5 keys to quality assessment
TRANSCRIPT
Assessment & Reporting
Lucía Conde Cambelo
Connect your experiences to the 5 keys to Quality Assessment.
After having studied and understood Unit 1, complete this activity
independently to understand the impact on students of sound and unsound
assessment practices.
1. Think of a time you yourself were assessed and it was a negative
experience. What made it negative?
Some time ago, I had to make a lesson planning in which I prepare my students
for being open-minded in terms of globalization and multiculturalism. It took me long
time to make the lesson planning because I really wanted to do best and have a high
grade. I made the lesson planning taking into account all the points teachers had told
me, however the teacher focused more on the oral presentation than on the work itself. I
usually get nervous when I have to do a presentation so I could not show what I really
work on properly. The thing is that my teacher just focused on that presentation in
which I could not develop the full work, so I was assessed and I got a grade which was
not enough for me, neither for the work I had developed. I agree that I have to do
presentations appropriately in order to get a better mark, but my teacher did not tell me
that the grade was going to be only based on the presentation because I had known that I
would have only work on the presentation and not on the written part.
2. Now think of a time you yourself were assessed and it was a positive
experience. What made it positive?
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Assessment & Reporting
Lucía Conde Cambelo
If a have to think about a positive experienced in which I was assessed I have to
think about situations in which I had a clear idea about what I have been taught and the
purpose of it, what I had to do and which criteria the teacher was going to use in order
to assess me. This year, in the master, some teachers have given us some guidelines in
which we were able to see what we were learning, the purpose, the activities to get the
goals and the mark we could get in each one of the activities. By this way, we were able
to see from the first moment what our teachers wanted us to do and what we were going
to know at the end of the course.
3. Which of the five keys to assessment quality were involved in your
negative experience?
Purpose and targets were not enough clear because I knew what I had to do and
the objectives of that course but not the way I was going to be assessed. On the other
hand there was not effective communication between teacher and students because she
did not tell us that presentation was the only important thing and therefore sound design
was not clear. If I focus on the students’ involvement I have to say that from my point
of view, teacher paid no attention to students because she did not worried about the
difficulties we had to do presentations or the hard work we developed in the written
papers.
4. Which of the five keys to assessment quality were involved in your
positive experience?
In my opinion, that teachers took into account the 5 keys to assessment quality
because they give us clear targets and purpose. The assessment design was clear as we
knew the criteria and the mark we could get in each of the tasks. And, finally, effective
communication and students’ involvement were also great because from the beginning
they told us everything and the paid attention to our ideas and opinions in order to
improve the course.
5. What impact did each experience have on you?
On the one hand, the good experience has taught me that as a teacher I need to
focus on the 5 keys to assessment quality as some of my teachers did, because by this
way they got the best of us and we got a successful experience from that course.
On the other hand, the bad experience shows me what I do not have to do.
Sometimes it is difficult to have clear target and get your students involved in the
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Assessment & Reporting
Lucía Conde Cambelo
teaching-learning process but we have to try, even more when your students are adults
and they are able to understand everything you tell them.
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