Definition

Learning and feedback are iterative, and assessment comes from multiple sources, including self, peers, teachers, and outside experts when assessment and evaluation are helping learning. Learning-centered assessment is assessment that is designed to help our students learn, not just measure how well they have learned after the learning is over.  We give our learners feedback early and often so they can improve throughout a course, and use peer and self feedback to encourage that without over burdening the professor. Technology plays a key role in:

  • Providing easy ways to share assessment products with people marking them
  • Sharing feedback and comments in a variety of formats, including automatic feedback at early stages
  • Connecting feedback to specific parts of assessments, and making the feedback ease to act on
  • Anonymizing assessment to make grading more fair

Example

1 - Early, frequent feedback

Amar has two parts of his course where students struggle more than others, and both are important for upper year courses.  He uses the same sequence of formative assessment for each. He explains and demonstrates, then he has his students do practice questions online. The questions are automatically graded, and the technology gives hints and tips associated with the common wrong answers.  In the learning analytics, he can see what students got wrong, so he reteaches it in class.  Next he has students try a harder question, and compare their answers with a few other students in a small group to try to get the correct answer.  He has each group submit their answer in a synchronous online poll, and then discusses the response with the class. The combination of automatic feedback, feedback from peers, and whole class feedback from the professor means many more students correctly understand the common points of difficulty in the course. The students also get the feedback early and fix their misconceptions, so practicing and studying doesn’t cause them to rehearse and learn errors.

 

2 - Feedback variety

Jasmine wants to provide detailed feedback on her students’ mind maps, but she has many students and doesn’t have a lot of time. She uses technology to quickly bring up each student’s work, and display the rubric. She clicks on the parts of rubric rapidly to assign grades, and they will automatically submit to the gradebook when she is done. Jasmine also draws directly on the rubric and writes some notes on it, then records a short video message, zooming in to the parts of the mindmap she is referring to. Her students can easily see what she is referring to as she speaks, and it is simple to say more in the same time she used to write everything down. Students also get her feedback right away, and don’t need to wait until the next class, so they can keep working on the rest of the project, informed by her suggestions. 

Breadth of Options (3E)

Below are examples of using learning technologies for learning-centered assessment. For more examples of using learning technologies under the 3E Framework, see Illustrative examples of using learning technologies with the 3E framework.

Enhance

Extend

Empower

The instructor provides feedback using a rubric in Canvas supplied to the students when the assignment was given. The instructor provides inline feedback through annotated comments as well as additional comments on the Canvas rubric.

Students submit a draft version of their assignment for peer feedback from other students. They use the same rubric to guide feedback that was supplied when the assignment was given and that the instructor will use. Peers provide annotated feedback on the assignment as well as comments on the rubric. Students then revise their work before submitting it to the instructor.

Students submit their completed assignment along with the feedback they received from classmates on their draft version. They also include a self-evaluation on their process and their learning through this assignment. The instructor provides feedback on the assignment and the self-evaluation using annotated comments, assignment comments and the rubric.

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