Implications for teaching in large classes
Reflecting on the whole assessment project, using assessment@yourfingertips proved it could be an extremely helpful device in classrooms of any size. The particular benefit it offers tutors of large classes is the amount of time it saves on time consuming, non-productive managerial tasks. Much of a tutor's role involves marking assessments and recording, managing and monitoring the students' results. Students expect, and are entitled to, quality feedback but this also consumes considerable tutor time. The importance of the time-saving aspect can best be summed up by one of the tutor's responses to using the tool:
"I had extra time to focus on the really important things about marking; determining quality and thinking about what learning my students were demonstrating, so that then informed my teaching. What gaps are here? What do I need to really work on in my class? What understanding haven't these students developed, which is what assessment should really be about, not adding marks and stuff."
The needs of individual students can be clearly identified and monitored easily through the tool. Even in a small class monitoring can be an onerous undertaking. This process can be utilized throughout the program so a clear profile of students is developed over the four years.
Larger classes pose significant teaching challenges, particularly in the assessment of student learning. Five distinct, though interrelated, challenges have been identified when assessing large student cohorts. Through the team's assessment project, the assessment@yourfingertips process proved successful in addressing all five of these challenges. The challenges identified included avoiding assessment that encourages shallow learning; providing high quality, individual feedback; fairly assessing a diverse mix of students; managing the volume of marking and coordinating the staff involved in marking; and avoiding plagiarism (Australian Universities Teaching Committee, 2002).
Online assessment has become a common practice for tutors of large classes. Automatically marked multiple choice and/or short answer questions, are utilized to provide feedback to students. These methods do not necessarily avoid the problems of low-level learning or plagiarism whereas the process described, caters for higher-order thinking and deep learning through the use of the rubric. Like Wolf, Bixby, Glen and Gardner (Wiggins, 1998), we decided that what students most need, is information designed to enable them to accurately self-assess and self-correct so the assessment becomes "an episode of learning". The rubric provided this before assignment submission as well as in the form of feedback after marking. This process provided valuable professional development because the students will be required to teach children to self-regulate when working with them in schools.
Plagiarism was avoided by the nature of the actual assignment set. Turning tasks into self-assessed work or peer-assessed work spared tutors from a lot of routine marking. Our work supported the claim by Race and Brown (2001) that it is much quicker to moderate students' peer assessments than to assess them from scratch ourselves. Tutors found this when assessing the written papers.
Criticisms regarding the issue of how to maintain consistency across a number of markers when using non-objectivist testing have arisen recently (Northcote, 2003). The coordination of staff throughout this project was handled in a manner that ensured common understandings and marking consistency. As a result, the volume of marking was managed smoothly.
Teaching in large classes often involves group work. It appeals as an efficient way to teach as workloads increase and available time diminishes. The assessment process used in this project supports Burdett's (2003) suggestion, that students should be encouraged to take greater responsibility for their learning and group work is one way of providing such opportunities. Group work models constructivist teaching. Through collaboration with others in their group, students constructed their own knowledge.
The scaffolding of group work within the EDL1201 unit supports the views expressed by Homan and Poel (1999) (Burdett, 2003) that students must be taught how to be effective group members. Mutch (1998) (Burdett, 2003) agrees that the mastery of group work skills requires explicit treatment and teaching, in much the same way that other areas of skill and knowledge are addressed. Throughout the unit, aspects of group skills were explored highlighting the complexity of working in groups so students gained an understanding of what it means when children in schools are asked to work in groups. This developed yet another skill the students will require as future classroom teachers.
