After reading the three most recent chapters of Developing Outcomes-based Assessment for Learning-centered Education. I feel like the concepts and practices behind designing an outcomes-based class are becoming clearer. While the book title highlights assessment, I was deliberate to leave that word out of my previous statement because it is apparent that having outcomes-based assessments requires a complete overhaul of the standard course structure and is not a stylistic implementation that can simply be sprinkled into a traditional course structure.
Categorizing intelligences and learning styles illustrated how our current academic paradigms do not accommodate even half of the aforementioned and moreover, encourages (read forces) a typecasting of intelligence and learning style. While in many ways I do not think it is feasible to attempt to cover all seven intelligences and all four learning styles, especially in a larger classroom, being aware of the differences can aid when teachers help students on a more one-on-one context. Furthermore, as a teachers gets to know their class, they can adjust based on which intelligences/learning styles are more prevalent. I personally have worked towards addressing as many learning styles as I can. This is a skill I’ve honed through years of working with a wide variety of children at the martial arts school. The necessity to explain the same topic in two, three, four different ways to help kids understand has certainly helped me in the university setting.
My inability to alter the assignments for the class are a hindrance and major roadblock in addressing the varieties of intelligences. My primary question leaving this chapters though is how to encourage formative assignments and specifically how to finagle the standard assignments I am required to use into a formative process.
On page 99 of the text, the quote “Students’ writing quality or presentation is often a major distracter from our intended outcomes and criteria.” resonated with me and my teaching experiences. In my technology classes, the fact of the matter is that I have a large demographic of foreign students and specifically students whose first language is not English. This hurts my ability to use a full range of assessment strategies. However, I’ve used this deficiency as an area for formative development where I engage the students much more than a traditional IT class and they will develop presentation skills and hopefully diminish the feelings of “stage fright” that many students have.
The Outcome, Evidence, Criteria, Standards Model is going to be integral to my syllabus creation. From reading the text, it’s of the utmost importance to be clear in directions and this begins with the syllabus for the course. The current syllabus I’m provided with describes a timeline of lectures, quizzes, and assignments but has very little verbiage on outcomes, the criteria for the assignments, and the standards for the assignments. In fact, the lab assignment grading system is a simple binary scale for each “requirement”. Additionally, building on the ideas of multiple intelligences, I would like to consolidate the lab assignments and reduce them so there is not a programming assignment due every week, but rather alternate between concepts and actual syntax. This will allow the class to utilize evidences other than turning in a program every week. Lastly, I’d like to adjust the grading of assignments to better represent proper coding practices and displaying concepts rather than rewarding for proper syntax and “muscling out the program”. This will allow students a greater ability to grow and learn from past assignments instead of receiving feedback of “this component did not work”.