Currently within my program and individual courses, there is literally so much material crammed in that we utilize every minute of our class time, and often more. This is in addition to having an overloaded program, where students carry above what is considered a full-time compliment of courses. To this end, we often discuss assessment. We’ve undergone a radical and effective evaluative change in our practical lab components, however our theory classes have remained very traditional. The biggest driving factor of this is the provincial certification exam post-graduation, which is a six hour comprehensive multiple choice exam, written to be confusing, to distract with non-essential material, with page long questions, and a focus on multiple-multiples. I don’t agree with the format of this exam, but that’s for a different post. SO, that’s why we haven’t yet ventured towards other assessment strategies, we feel our students need the practice of this style of exam and questions. As a college program, our job is to help students acquire the skills needed to obtain employment and build a successful career and healthy life through their chosen profession, and part of this is ensuring they will obtain certification. Today I was reading an article from Faculty Focus, and then from within the comments there was the following shared resource: http://www.lifescied.org/content/16/1/ar2 This article shed some light on this dilemma for me. A way to continue to give students the style of questions they need to practice in a legitimate setting, and a novel way of evaluating to improve overall performance as well as impart successful generalizable strategies. The premise is provide students with weekly cumulative exams, provide immediate feedback, and encouragement to improve upon metacognitive strategies. This demonstrated increased student success in higher order questions, even when question content had not been tested before. To take this a step further, the study also shows how a grading scheme was used that incorporated five different weights to each assessment, to allow for students to improve with time, decline with time, or maintain performance. Marks were input to a spreadsheet, and whatever method identified the highest mark, that was the score utilized for that student. It helps students by:
Be Aware Of:
This is certainly an idea I’m going to let fester a bit and discuss with my colleagues.We currently have classes with infrequent and high-stakes exams, is this truly necessary?The biggest concern I initially hold is the class time this would utilize.Could this be offset by increased readings / self and group work assignments?I think the biggest benefit is the increase is student metacognitive and self-regulating skills.
2 Comments
Caitlin Thalheimer
2/13/2017 07:02:33 pm
Hi Jason,
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2/16/2017 03:21:01 pm
Hi Caitlin, it's encouraging to hear so quickly of others implementing course evaluation methods like that. I brought this up with my program colleagues today and they were intrigued, we're certainly about trying to do everything we can as educators to help our students find success. Our theory classes are traditionally lecture based, with a lot of real-world relevance brought in, but as in most classrooms like this, there are a few highly engaged students, a few that can barely stay awake, and many that would use your word "unsure" as they walk out. You've given me some encouraging thoughts, thanks!
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AuthorI teach Paramedicine at Cambrian College, in Sudbury, Ontario. I also continue to work as a paramedic, and ride bikes. This is my third semester in the PME program, and I look forward to learning with everyone! Archives
March 2017
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