Title: Assessing student learning: Expanding assessment to include a focus on process as well as content outcomes

Presenters:

• Alex Radloff, RMIT University
• Barbara de la Harpe, Curtin University of Technology

Rationale

We don't pay a lot of attention right now to giving students feedback on their progress as learners. Mostly, students get grades that tell them how they have done relative to their classmates. That information is not useful feedback on their progress as learners, nor does it do anything to help students develop skills for self-assessment (Cross, 1998, p. 7).

Traditional assessment often focuses on narrow abilities such as memorization, fails to provide useful feedback to either teachers or students about the process of learning and allows minimal student involvement in assessment. Such an approach to assessment contributes little to the development of students as effective lifelong learners. Educational outcomes important for lifelong learning and espoused by most university teachers, namely student motivation, beliefs and feelings, and cognitive and metacognitive abilities, are largely overlooked in the traditional teacher-centred, content-focused transmission model of teaching and learning, where assessment focuses on the "...products of learning" rather on the "...how and why of student learning" (Anderson, 1998, p. 8).

Objectives

The purpose of this workshop is to explore how assessment can be expanded to include a focus on the process of learning that will help both teachers and students to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. The workshop will include - based on theory and research - examples of effective assessment tools and strategies for assessing educational outcomes in terms of student motivation, affect and cognitive and metacognitive abilities, and discuss how these can be used in a range of educational settings.

Maximum number of participants: 25

The workshop is designed to encourage participant involvement, interaction, collaboration, reflection and feedback in a safe learning environment. The workshop will be especially relevant for university teachers, administrators and student advisors who are committed to improving educational outcomes and encouraging lifelong learning.

References

Anderson, R. S. (1998). Why talk about different ways to grade? The shift from traditional assessment to alternative assessment. In R. S. Anderson & B. W. Speck (Eds.), Changing the way we grade student performance: Classroom assessment and the new learning paradigm (pp. 5-16). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cross, K. P. (1998). Classroom research: Implementing the scholarship of teaching. In T. Angelo (Eds.), Classroom assessment and research: An update on uses, approaches, and research findings (pp. 5-12). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.