Transforming assessment

Assessment: call to action
Here’s a paper of interest to all – a call to action on assessment by the big three: Cisco, Intel and Microsoft. This paper is a call to action to reform educational assessment with the project being lead by none other than, Dr Barry McGaw!

Here are the main points:

• Digital technologies have had a significant impact on the global economies, work, society and everyday life. Education has been slow to respond.
• ‘Around the world, the three most common pedagogical practices were having students fill out worksheets, work at the same pace and sequence, and answer tests. The use of ICT was limited.’
• Current assessment reflect the pedagogical practices in the classroom and are key in determining what is taught.
• Traditional assessments do not measure the skills that are required for life, work and study in the 21st century.
• There is a widening gap in what happens in schools and outside of school (see Box 1 pp. 6 & 7)
• Example: If writing is assessed by pen-and-paper, then it is more likely to be taught in this way. Yet research consistently indicates that using computers to improves the quality of writing.
• There are many instances of innovative classroom practice powered by digital technologies, but traditional assessments cannot examine these approaches.
• Page 8 has definitions of ‘ICT literacy’ yet strangely doesn’t include that used in the National Assessment Program ICT literacy from MCEETYA. It does refer to other major ‘players’ in this area international Society for technology in Education (ISTE), Educational Testing Service (ETS). I can forward their ICT frameworks if anyone is interested – just let me know.
• A set of ICT skills for the 21st century has been proposed – page 10.
• This project seeks to define these skills and develop an assessment framework, set of standards etc.

Very interesting! Highly recommended for a coffee break read.