Students' Conceptions of Understanding and Its Assessment

2020 ◽  
pp. 1596-1617
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hamer ◽  
Erik Jan van Rossum
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Constructivist Learning ◽  
Study Success ◽  
Constructive Alignment ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
Choice Testing ◽  
Learning Focused

Understanding means different things to different people, influencing what and how students learn and teachers teach. Mainstream understanding of understanding has not progressed beyond the first level of constructivist learning and thinking, ie academic understanding. This study, based on 167 student narratives, presents two hitherto unknown conceptions of understanding matching more complex ways of knowing, understanding-in-relativism and understanding-in-supercomplexity requiring the development of more complex versions of constructive alignment. Students comment that multiple choice testing encourages learning focused on recall and recognition, while academic understanding is not assessed often and more complex forms of understanding are hardly assessed at all in higher education. However, if study success depends on assessments-of-learning that credit them for meaning oriented learning and deeper understanding, students will put in effort to succeed.

Students' Conceptions of Understanding and Its Assessment

2017 ◽  
pp. 140-161
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hamer ◽  
Erik Jan van Rossum
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Constructivist Learning ◽  
Study Success ◽  
Constructive Alignment ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
Choice Testing ◽  
Learning Focused

Understanding means different things to different people, influencing what and how students learn and teachers teach. Mainstream understanding of understanding has not progressed beyond the first level of constructivist learning and thinking, ie academic understanding. This study, based on 167 student narratives, presents two hitherto unknown conceptions of understanding matching more complex ways of knowing, understanding-in-relativism and understanding-in-supercomplexity requiring the development of more complex versions of constructive alignment. Students comment that multiple choice testing encourages learning focused on recall and recognition, while academic understanding is not assessed often and more complex forms of understanding are hardly assessed at all in higher education. However, if study success depends on assessments-of-learning that credit them for meaning oriented learning and deeper understanding, students will put in effort to succeed.

scholarly journals Redesigning Summative Evaluation in Medical English

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-150
Author(s):  
Anişoara Pop
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Summative Evaluation ◽  
Clear Image ◽  
Medical English ◽  
Choice Testing ◽  
Communicative Context

AbstractEvaluation of discrete skills such as reading comprehension as well as vocabulary and grammar multiple choice testing are commonplace in Medical English examinations in higher education. But are these approaches to evaluation practically oriented enough so as to provide a clear image of what students can do with the language in a real life communicative context? This paper will present a case of projectbased evaluation with students in English for Medical Cosmetics likely to meet such challenges.

Consequences of multiple-choice testing persist over one week

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa K. Fazio ◽  
Elizabeth J. Marsh ◽  
Henry L. Roediger
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Choice Testing

scholarly journals Knowledge assessment: Squeezing information from multiple-choice testing.

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-177
Author(s):  
Raymond S. Nickerson ◽  
Susan F. Butler ◽  
Michael T. Carlin
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Knowledge Assessment ◽  
Choice Testing

The wheel of fortune as a novel support for constructive alignment and transformative sustainability learning in higher education

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Noy ◽  
Teresa Capetola ◽  
Rebecca Patrick
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Student Experiences ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Constructive Alignment ◽  
Common Framework ◽  
Changing Times

Purpose Education for Sustainability in Higher Education (ESHE) sits within and across disciplinary settings that share the need for a framework that provides a basis for pedagogy, assessment and learning outcomes (Kalsoom, 2019). ESHE strives to create transformative learning spaces that help students gain the knowledge and skills they need to understand and contribute to shaping a world based on communities living within the limits of earth’s resources. This paper aims to offer a novel solution to the challenge of teaching students from different disciplines struggling with the complexity of sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The paper explores the development of an interdisciplinary subject designed for undergraduate students from four faculties. It presents a case study of pedagogy that moves away from three pillars/concentric circles approaches towards practices based in systems thinking and interactive transformative learning. It describes the iterative process of developing and implementing an infographic: the “Sustainability Wheel of Fortune” (Wheel), to support constructive alignment of content, assessment tasks and learning outcomes. Findings The Wheel provides a holistic, interconnected and dynamic focus for framing content and teaching. The pedagogy aligns with sustainability competencies, builds in flexibility in response to changing times and student experiences and provides teachers and students with a common framework for interrogating the possibilities for sustainable futures. Originality/value The Wheel is a novel learning tool for contemporary sustainability education. It captures key elements of approaches to and concepts about sustainability, visually reinforces the idea of a holistic interconnected approach and provides a framework that supports the constructive pedagogy of an interdisciplinary sustainability subject.

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