OLDaily

Evaluating assessment
Jon Dron, 2020/08/26

I would imagine people would both strongly agree and disagree with this very progressive approach to assessment. In particular, I can't imagine there would be wide agreement with the statement that "the primary purpose of assessment is to help the learner to improve their learning. All assessment should be formative." Jon Dron achieves this by classifying as 'judgement' any assessment that doesn't satisfy his criteria. But if so, then we simply stipulate that students need to be subjected to both assessment and judgement, and we're back where we started (but with new terminology). But the wider and more common meaning of assessment includes pure judgements, and sometimes the purpose of such is simply to determine whether you've made the grade, period full stop.

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Opinion: The upside of the tech revolution in education in an upside down world
Lyall Lukey, Education Central, 2020/08/26

This is a nice response to those who argue that online learning shouldn't be about the tech tools. "Of course devices are tools and not methodologies. But we look sideways at tradesmen who don’t keep up with developments in the tools of their trade." Right? And this article goes on to discuss some of the new methodologies these tools enable, and to wonder about those who stick to the standard pre-technological 50-minute lecture format. "When I made my first analogue training videos in the 1980s I had to employ off duty TV videographers and technicians. DIY wasn’t an option... Now, if we wish, we can capture a range of marvellous visual and other digital resources on a pocket-sized device."

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7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Labs
EDUCAUSE, 2020/08/26

This is a timely resource (2 page PDF) if only because of the current environment. "Virtual labs allow students to participate in lab-based learning exercises without the costs and limitations of a physical lab... Virtual labs can provide access for students in online programs or who are unable to attend physical labs due to illness or injury... and - as was demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic - virtual labs can fill gaps in education at any institution due to a public-health crisis or other disruption.

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School Planning Guide 2020-21
Education Endowment Foundation, 2020/08/26

There's a lot of good advice in the document (24 page PDF) as a whole, particularly the emphasis on targeted individual instruction, and its assertion that teaching quality (which needs to be unpacked) is more important that how lessons are delivered (ie., online or offline). That said there is an over-emphasis on direct instruction, and especially the way pastoral and academic education are treated as the same sort of thing. There's also an over-emphasis on testing, not enough emphasis on social conditions and environment, especially at home, and the need to support independent learning (at home and away from the screen) should be described in much more detail.

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Instructional Strategies for Today
Mitch Weisburgh, PILOTed, 2020/08/26

This is a summary of Instructional Strategies for the Future, covered here last week. "The big switch," writes Mitch Weisburgh, "is to deploy learning strategies, where learners experience diverse learning activities, media, and contexts, many of which fall outside of what the instructor or instructional designer can control or even foresee. Learning outcomes are increasingly self-directed. Technology is often the bridge that connects learning events to each other, and learning occurs as the collective sum of the variety of learning events and experiences."

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