Eva L. Baker and Girlie DelacruzUCLA / CRESST

Council of Chief State School Officers

National Conference on Student Assessment

Session: A Vital Goal: Blending Assessment with Instruction

National Harbor, MD

June 21, 2013, 8:00am

Blended Learning: Integrating Instruction and Assessment

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Assessment Today?

• Content focus

• Summative

• Accountability

• Formative

• Changing Formats

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Blended Assessment and Instruction

Assessment

Instruction

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Blended

• Mixed to an even consistency

• Smoothed on the edges

• Computers-based and classroom teachers

• In this context

Key elements needed for improvement

1. One obvious interpretation, formative assessment during instruction

2. Assessment that promotes success in an uncertain world

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1. FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

• Derived from formative evaluation, checking progress during instruction, finding strategies to help learners fix any shortfalls or misconceptions

• Various mystiques about ways to make it work

Focus key elements rather than total performance

Strategies to heighten learner attention

Forms of feedback

Follow-up to assure positive result

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Formative Assessment in Technological Systems

• As conducted in instructional systems, formative assessment involves various forms and formats of tasks, adaptation, and feedback cycles

• The system adapts to learner successes and failures

• Adaptation models yield evidence of high levels of performance and cost-savings to reach key proficiencies

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Technology adaptations are currently canned, but it is possible, based on learner’s responses and motivation, to create instruction on-the-fly and to truly personalize learning.

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Teachers’ Use of Formative Assessment

• Synonymous with “old” views of good instruction

• Requires close analysis of student’s work

• Demands time for interactions with students

• Wealth of knowledge about potential causes of misconceptions or mistakes

• Teachers need depth of expertise to suggest effective intervening options

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Challenges of the Common Core Assessments

• Studies have shown that teachers’ self-reports of their own content knowledge predict their student levels of achievement on open-ended and traditional measures

• Content knowledge in Common Core State Standards may challenge some teachers

• They will need help to provide close, adaptive, and timely feedback

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Ways to Help SupportFormative Assessment

• Share domain ontologies and maps

• Share performance criteria

• Provide models of ranges of good and less good performance

• Connect reasons to performance differences

• Engage learners as peer or collaborative helpers

• Use technology like learning games for formative assessments

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Two Views of Learning

For the Present, For the Future

• Learning as logical repetition, additive to complexity

• Fluency and automaticity

• Example: Procedural Learning

• Learning as adaptive and integrative

• Deconstructs learned patterns, determine how they apply, change, or combine to create solutions to unpredictable situations

• Example: Problem solving

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2. Instruction and Assessment to Support Future Learning—Transfer• With rapid explosion and revision of knowledge

• With changing careers and unstable contexts

• With unfiltered access to knowledge

• With multiple careers in a lifetime

• With relentless global competition

Learners must be taught, evaluated, and assessed on their ability to apply and adapt learning to new situations

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New and unstable knowledge

Rapidly changing contexts

Demography

Differential birthrates

Multinational sources of career

and jobs Globalization vs. localization

Ever-increasing competition

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What Does this Mean for Blended Learning and Assessment?

• Opportunity to confront unpredictable situations of varying complexity

• Opportunity to demonstrate ability to solve unexpected problems under various conditions

• Formal and informal assessments must make adaptive learning central

• Impossible to drill for this task

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Blending Mixes Up Student Awareness, Agency, and Privacy

• If my performance counts, I want to know about it

• If my data are being mined and combined to draw inferences about instruction, OK

• If personal information is being used in a blended context, watch out for consent and privacy

baker@cse.ucla.edu

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Citations:

• http://gorawgogreen.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/vitamix-blender21.jpg?w=276&h=300• http://www.crazy4me.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Pink-Question-Mark.jpg• http://studentweb.cortland.edu/Jamie.Vacheresse/project%205/cartoon-airplane.jpg• http://www.emeraldinsight.com/fig/40_10_1108_S2044-9968_2012_000006C011.png• http://instantseeze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/iphone-4g-concept.jpg• http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/LA0317-001-four-babies-sitting-in-row-rear-view-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=pOqdjKpfV%2BSQ0E6yHLWDgoudDKRhx4gTToLyYaynX0d%2FeflHw0g8jNSd7t9VxLek8831I3uslpxFQ4vfcN6DRQ%3D%3D• http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3469/3721809183_847a705f0c.jpg• http://www.100open.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/magnifying-glass.jpg