Hello, fellow Cohort-ians! I’m BACK for another installment of learning and growing with this rocking community. I enjoyed my first go-round last year, but am eager to have another season to further reflect and refine the issues on my mind. And at this early point in the year, I’m not *fully* sure what that is. But some things that feel urgent concern the same area I had on my mind last year: assessment. But while last year, I was interested in re-imagining the approach to assessment, this year, I want to refine some of the assessments I’m currently using, and particularly, the ways I offer students feedback on their assignments. I’m still interested in alternative approaches, but I’ve also found that I have some projects and tasks we’ve been using that I like, and find valuable, but I struggle with how to most effectively offer students feedback on their work. I teach in an integrated, interdisciplinary program, and as such a lot of our summative tasks are quite varied and involved. It can be tough to confidently and accurately determine how successful a student has been at such a project. So, something that’s on my mind is trying to determine: With the assessments I currently use, what are the essential skills being practiced here, and how can I effectively measure how well a student has demonstrated that skill, and then, how can I communicate to them how to improve?
In other words, for each task, I want to determine what this branded bottle of organic ginger supplements below calls the Divine Essence, crystallize that for myself, my teaching team, and the students, and then ensure I’m accurately assessing it in their final work. At this early September starting point, this is what’s feeling most urgent.
@rgaio Thanks for getting the ball rolling with this great post. I’m glad you are continuing with assessment as your action plan focus. Double dipping with your GDP goal is the best way to leverage the power of this community!
Yes, it’ll be so helpful to have the Cohort community collabing on the GDP goal (wow, some nice alliteration there!). Thanks for reading the post!