Online engagement and performance on formative assessments mediate the relationship between attendance and course performance

In traditional school-based learning, attendance was regarded as a proxy for engagement and key indicator for performance. However, few studies have explored the effect of in-class attendance in technology-enhanced courses that are increasingly provided by secondary institutions. This study collected n = 367 undergraduate students’ log files from Moodle and applied learning analytics methods to measure their lecture attendance, online learning activities, and performance on online formative assessments. A baseline and an alternative structural equation models were used to investigate whether online learning engagement and formative assessment mediated the relationship between lecture attendance and course academic outcomes. Results show that lecture attendance does not have a direct effect on academic outcomes, but it promotes performance by leveraging online learning engagement and formative assessment performance. Findings contribute to understanding the impact of in-class attendance on course academic performance and the interplay of in-class and online-learning engagement factors in the context of technology-enhanced courses. This study recommends using a variety of educational technologies to pave multiple pathways to academic success.

Assessment practices in Saudi higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic

This study determines the assessment practices used by teaching staff in Saudi universities, explores how these assessment practices have changed during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, and investigates how teaching staffs’ priorities and preferences for education on assessment during the pandemic were shaped. To support professional development, the study also aims to raise teaching staffs’ awareness of assessment practices. Teaching staff in Saudi universities were invited to complete the Approaches to Classroom Inventory survey. The results showed that the most highly endorsed practices included giving feedback, linking assessments to learning objectives and learning outcomes, using scoring guides, and monitoring and revising assessment approaches. The least endorsed practices included mapping summative assessment to curriculum expectations, responding to the cultural and linguistic diversity of students, and accommodating students with special needs/exceptionalities in assessments. Further, during the pandemic, formative assessments were rarely used. Although faculty members from various colleges and fields of specialty showed similar patterns in endorsing assessment practices, they differed in their preferences and needs for assessment education.

Don't Assess a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree

The heterogeneity of students in today's classrooms present many obstacles when it comes to formatively assessing learning. The formative assessment cycle affords teachers numerous opportunities to measure student progress towards objectives, provide timely feedback, and make necessary adjustments to instruction. Formative assessments also provide considerable value to students, in the form of learning engagement, and tracking their own progress and planning of future steps. Due to the value of formative assessments in making decisions and supporting students, it is necessary that educators plan and utilize equitable assessment practices to eliminate unnecessary barriers students may face. The chapter will therefore discuss the obstacles that variable learners may experience that impede their inclusion in classrooms, the importance of the universal design for learning in ensuring engagement and multiple means of action and expression, and finally, bring awareness to students with disabilities and the importance of accommodations and modifications in their success.

Inclusive Formative Assessment for Diverse Pre-Service Foundation Phase Literacy Teachers

Many classrooms in South Africa are very diverse in terms of culture, gender, language, and intellectual ability. Thus, educators need to be inclusive in the way they plan for teaching and learning. This chapter attempts to show how teacher educators at one institution of higher education in South Africa implemented inclusive formative assessments in their initial teacher education programme. Traditional assessment practices like examinations, tests, and essays, which dominate many classrooms, have proven to be unable to capture the range and nature of the diverse learning outcomes sought from courses. In this study, students were given different assessment tasks to demonstrate their knowledge of the handwriting skills and pedagogy. Findings of the study show that teacher educators managed to accommodate all the students through their use of inclusive assessments. Teacher educators observed improvement in student's self-esteem, motivation, and engagement.

Assessment as Learning in Medical Education: Feasibility and perceived impact of student-generated formative assessments (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a vital competency, desirable to sustain lifelong learning in health professions education. Contemporary education practices emphasize this aspect of undergraduate medical education through innovative designs of teaching and learning like the flipped classroom and team-based learning. Assessment as learning (AaL) can be a unique way to inculcate SRL through active learning habits. It charges the student to create formative assessments reinforcing student-centered deep learning, and critical thinking. OBJECTIVE This study aims to explore, from the learners’ perspective, the feasibility and perceived learning impact of student generated formative assessments. METHODS The study relied on a convergent mixed methods approach to research. An educational intervention was deployed on a cohort of students in the second year of a six-year undergraduate medical program as part of a single course curriculum delivery. This AaL intervention engaged students in generating assessments using peer-collaboration, tutor facilitation, and feedback. Quantitative and qualitative data of student perceptions were collected through a survey. Quantitative survey data was analysed using SPSS. Qualitative inputs underwent thematic analysis. RESULTS Students’ overall score of satisfaction with the AaL educational intervention was 84%. On quantitative analysis, this was strongly correlated with scores for ease and impact on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis, included: prominent characteristics, immediate gains, and expected long-term benefits of their engagement. The prominent characteristics included individuals’ engagement, effective interdependencies, novelty, and time requirement. The identified immediate gains highlighted increased motivation, and acquisition of knowledge and skills. The expected long-term benefits, included critical thinking and problem solving, and clinical reasoning. CONCLUSIONS As a form of AaL, student-generated assessments were perceived as viable, constructive, and a stimulating educational exercise by the student-authors. In the short term, the activity provided students a fun, challenging opportunity to deep dive into the content, be creative in designing questions, and improve exam-taking skills. In the long-term students expected an enhancement of critical thinking, and inculcation of student-centred attributes of self-regulated lifelong learning and peer collaboration, vital to the practice of medicine.

COMPETENCY-BASED EDUCATION: THEORY AND PRACTICE

This study aimed to reach a pro on Competency-Based Education (CBE) through the opinions of Educational Sciences experts and to review the literature on CBE. In this study, convergent design, one of the mixed methods research, was used, and a semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The sample was selected through convenience sampling and consisted of 28 participants. In the study, the documents related to National and International Qualifications Frameworks, history of CBE, its comparison with traditional education, its implementation, and the challenges of CBE practices are reviewed. The findings revealed that there is a conceptual consensus among the experts on the concepts of skill and learning outcome, but no agreement on the use of “competence,” “proficiency,” and “qualification.” The study showed that the experts adopt the most up-to-date definitions of CBE, but it is often confused with Proficiency-Based Education. The study revealed that CBE focuses on the demonstration of competence when considering students’ progress and measures it by formative assessments and that, in CBE, students’ learning gaps are eliminated by supporting them at each stage.

Error Analyses and the Cognitive or Linguistic Influences on Children’s Spelling: Comparisons Between First- and Second-Language Learners

A collection of cognitive, linguistic, and spelling measures were administered to third- grade English L1 and L2 learners. To capture formative assessments of children’s developing mental graphemic representations (MGRs), spelling errors in isolation were subjected to analysis across three metrics: (1) Phonological constrained; (2) Visual- Orthographic; and (3) Correct Letter Sequences. There were no group differences on the cognitive or spelling accuracy measures, but L1 learners achieved higher scores than L2 on linguistic measures of vocabulary and syntactic knowledge. Analyses across the spelling metrics indicated that both L1 and L2 learners drew more heavily on their knowledge of graphophonemic rules and positional constraints in pronunciation for spelling. However, the contribution of underlying cognitive and linguistic resources to spelling differed as a function of scoring system and language group. Across spelling metrics, linguistic predictors (vocabulary and syntactic knowledge) accounted for more variance in L1 than L2 learners. The results are discussed in relation to conceptualization of spelling as an integral link between oral and written language in literacy development.