scholarly journals Network-Based Approach to Assessment of Cognitive Skills

Author(s):  
Natalie Simper ◽  
Brian Frank ◽  
Nerissa Mulligan

Cognitive Assessment Redesign (CAR) project is an institution-wide, network-based approach to the development of cognitive skills in undergraduate education. This project aims to encourage first and fourth-year instructors to align skill development through the design of course assessments, to enhance cognitive skill acquisition and provide a measurement of learning. The learning outcomes for the project are framed and operationalized using the language and dimensions from the Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) rubrics. An assessment redesign network was created, matching assessment facilitators who have disciplinary and educational expertise with instructors to develop authentic assessments of student learning. One of the goals of the network is to encourage sustained participation and collaboration, and to build progression in teaching and learning throughout the institution. The project also includes a standardized test for comparison to course assessment outcomes. Testing at the fourth-year level has been dependent on the use of incentives for student participation. Although recruiting instructors from the faculty of Engineering and Applied Science was initially a challenge, course instructors have reported various successes stemming from participation in the project.

2019 ◽  
pp. 263-269
Author(s):  
Nwakwengu S.A. ◽  
Aneke C.U.

The main purpose of this study was to determine the influence of urbanization in teaching and learning of agriculture in Ebonyi State. The study was guided by two research questions and two null hypotheses. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population was 397 which comprised 261 teachers of agricultural science in Ebonyi State and 136 senior secondary three students from 5 public secondary school in Abakiliki, Ebonyi State. No sampling was done due to the manageable size of the population. The instrument used for data collection was a 17 item questionnaire which was validated by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha which yielded reliability index of 0.85 indicating that the instrument was suitable for data collection. The questionnaire was distributed by the researcher and three trained research assistants. Out of 397 copies distributed 383 were properly filled and returned representing 96.47 percent return rate. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and t-test statistics was used to test the null hypotheses. Based on the data analysis, it was found that urbanization affects the quality of teachers in rural schools due to rural urban migration, increases the rate of agricultural teacher‟s turnover in teaching and reduces government attention to agricultural science teaching facilities in urban areas. Recommendations were made among, others that Government should be make teaching of skill acquisition in urban settlement to be attractive to the students and teachers should make instruction facilities to meet the needed skills and contemporary issues in urban settlement to the students.


2000 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie-Qi Chen ◽  
Renee Salahuddin ◽  
Patricia Horsch ◽  
Suzanne L. Wagner

Author(s):  
Michael S. McPherson ◽  
Francesca B. Purcell

For all of the doubts raised about the benefits of a college education, it delivers on its promises of greater individual and social prosperity. This article provides an overview of work by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education Progress, which offers a national strategy to improve the college student experience. It argues that teaching and learning need to be prioritized so that all students have high-quality postsecondary educational experiences that incorporate a blend of liberal arts and vocational skills. Efforts around improving completion rates and making college more affordable need additional action and there are promising practices to lead the way.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suman Kothakonda

<p>My main goal is to focus on the importance of multilingual education through translanguaging pedagogies in Telangana schools especially in the areas of minority linguistic communities. India is remarkably well-known for cultural and linguistic diversity. In such a context, it is difficult to implement the right medium of instruction in which the students’ home language is different from the school language. Though there are many factors involved in delivering quality education, language plays a significant role in teaching and learning across the world. The majority of the schools encourage dominant language(s) in teaching and learning in Indian states. As a result, students of non-dominant language(s) are totally out of the classroom conversations and they slowly come to know that their languages are less prestigious and not used in schools. This leads them to show less interest in learning. Non-dominant language(s) are pushed out of important domains and such languages are impoverished with limited functions in India. In this paper, I discuss the complexity which lies in providing the right media of instruction to heterogeneous students in Indian classrooms and also explores the students’ language(s) proficiency levels in two target languages. Finally, I explain some ways to develop students’ linguistic and cognitive skills in such a multilingual environment. Two schools were, for this study, visited to understand the language(s) scenario in the Telangana region. The data was collected from 15 students who were in the IX class.Apart from this, we interacted with teachers to get their opinions on various topics in relation to students’ language skills as well as multilingual education. Extensive individual interviews and long conversations were conducted from classroom teachers in relation to students’ language skills in three languages. The data was collected through a variety of sources in order to illuminate multilingual education in Telangana schools. Oral and written samples were collected from the participants in two languages L2 & L3. In the process of data collection, each student performed spoken as well as written tasks. Oral tasks consist of discussions, role-plays, and one storytelling task based on the provided pictures. Written tasks consist of reading, listening, and writing (vocabulary, grammar, and sentence meaning). The result of the collected data reveals the proficiency levels of students in L2 & L3. The empirical data, interviews, and conversations revealed the significance of LI in schools at the right time. </p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-12
Author(s):  
Anna Bargagliotti ◽  
Dorothea Herreiner ◽  
Jefrey A. Phillips

The April 2017 National Science Foundation-funded Breaking the Boundaries in STEM Education conference brought together Southern California science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty to explore equity, problem-solving, and computing in an interdisciplinary manner. Two main research questions guided the overall scope of the conference: (1) What are the common threads across disciplines to approach the teaching and learning of skills that are relevant in STEM? (2) What are the challenges and barriers that need to be overcome in order to foster collaboration across disciplines to impact the teaching and learning of skills relevant in STEM? We describe the background of the conference and provide an overview of the questions addressed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Basri Ibrahim, Zainal Abidin, Andika Jaya Putra

The purpose of this study was to determine the ability of teachers in aspects of learning planning, implementation, and assessment of learning Islamic education in Aceh. The research method used is quantitative survey format. The study population was all PAI teachers in East Aceh District, totaling 62 people. The research sample is the whole population (total sampling). The research instrument used a questionnaire Data analysis using inferential statistical tests (F test) assisted by SPSS version 21.0. The results showed that aspects of PAI teacher planning in East Aceh District had been able to apply the 2013 curriculum in learning. This can be seen from their ability to implement PAI learning using the 5M approach and they are able to conduct authentic assessments well. Therefore, special attention needs to be paid by the Regional Government, especially the Aceh Education Office to improve the professionalism of PAI teachers in Aceh so that the objectives of national education can be achieved optimally.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andra Oneci ◽  
◽  
Maria-Magdalena Joița ◽  
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◽  
...  

Technology is a means of accomplishing a task mainly by using technical processes, methods, or knowledge.The importance of technology in connection with any type of development is widely recognized, especially having considering nowadays’ worldwide Covid-19 context.The passage from standardized to digitalized teaching-learning process hasn’t been easy. Information technology and educational technology are now extensively being used in schools and refer to a wide multitude of teaching-and-learning–related software and hardware used during the lessons. Learning becomes effective when the students are actively engaged, are collaborating with one another, are in charge of their learning process, become critical thinkers and creative problem-solvers. Scientific thinking appears when thinking about the content of science and the set of reasoning processes that permeate the field of science: induction, deduction, experimental design, causal reasoning, concept formation, hypothesis testing, and so on, are combined. Simultaneously, teachers continue their lifelong learning process online, design digital lessons, gamify lessons, obtain real time results, are part of the staffroom at school and also part of a larger, more diverse, virtual staffroom. In conclusion, the goal of using technology inside and outside the classroom is perceived as a way to individualize education and to develop students’ competences and cognitive skills.


Author(s):  
Nor Hasbiah Ubaidullah ◽  
Zulkifley Mohamed ◽  
Jamilah Hamid ◽  
Suliana Sulaiman ◽  
Rahmah Lob Yussof

Admittedly, the teaching and learning of programming courses in the computer science and information technology programs have been extremely challenging. Currently, most instructors depend on either the problem-solving technique or the metacognitive technique to help students develop a range of cognitive skills, including metacognitive skills, which are important in the development of a strong computational thinking skill required for 21st-century learning. Studies focusing on the practices of instructors in using both techniques are scarce, thus motivating the researchers to carry out this study. This study was based on a qualitative approach involving a case-study design in which five (5) male and five (5) female instructors were selected from 10 pre-university centers in Malaysia as the respondents and participants in an intervention program. The research instruments used were an interview checklist and intervention guidelines. As anticipated, the findings showed that the activities of each technique could only help students develop certain sub-skills of the computational thinking skill, thus underscoring the need for instructors to integrate both techniques in their teaching practices. Thus, it could be reasoned that using either the metacognitive technique or the problem-solving technique alone would not be sufficient to help students develop strong computational thinking skills, as each technique has its strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it becomes imperative for instructors to leverage the strengths of both techniques by integrating both of them in the teaching and learning of programming courses.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Mayeshiba ◽  
Kay Jansen ◽  
Lisa Mihlbauer

Non-term, direct assessment competency-based education (CBE) represents a significant re-imagining of the structure of higher education. By regulating students’ progress through the program based on their mastery of tightly defined competencies rather than based on the time spent learning them, this learning environment affords students far greater flexibility than traditional programs. This focus on defined competencies has led to concerns that students in these types of programs may not demonstrate higher-level skills, such as critical thinking, at levels comparable to those enrolled in more traditional programs. This study evaluated 39 students’ demonstration of critical thinking in two assessments administered in parallel versions of one course: one offered through the non-term, direct assessment CBE University of Wisconsin Flexible Option, and the other offered through a traditional online program. For this study, each of the 78 assessments was scored using the critical thinking rubric from the Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) project. We found that students from the CBE version of the course received significantly higher (p=.0013) overall scores than the students in the traditional online version of the course. While further research is required to refine these methods and ensure the generalizability of these results, they do not support concerns about students’ abilities in this learning environment.


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