Assessment
Assessment is an important aspect of any design project
work. It gives designers the feedback they need to change
their current designs, and helps them focus on criteria
that have and have not been met. For teachers, assessment
is critical in designing effective instruction. Timely
formative assessment can change the direction a lesson
takes, and can make the difference between students achieving
memorable learning and not.
- Formative
Assessment
Hear Paul Black of London's Kings College talk about
a set of practical teaching techniques -- formative
assessment -- that are strongly supported by some
of education's best research.
- Authentic
Assessment
Look at ways that design activities can support making
assessment more authentic and grading transparent
and realistic by making final projects more a public
than a classroom event.
- Assessing
Explanations
Listening to students' rationale for the design decisions
they make is central to assessing their design work.
Simply making design decisions is not enough: students
must explain why.
- Memorizing/Understanding
Checking that students are understanding (versus memorizing
facts) is important in assessment. Vanderbilt's Rich
Lehrer describes traits of learning environments where
students succeed in create understandings through
designing tasks where they build upon and extend their
own learning.
- Transfer
Tasks Having
students do follow-up tasks where the context has
been changed slightly or dramatically from the original
lesson is referred to as a transfer task, and helps
in checking for real understanding.
- Homework
Listen to and watch as different strategies are enacted
for getting students to do their design-related homework.
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