During schooling days the only thing about assessment that would come to mind is the scores, judgmental, verdicts, etc… but after this course I came to know that there is more to assessment than my previous understanding. The assessment is about improving the teaching & learning to reach the objective.

The assessment strategies that jump out is the idea of traditional & nontraditional assessment, alignment, feedback, reflective assessment. If aligned properly and the feedbacks are rightly acted upon then there would be a huge difference in uplifting the skills of the students. Another misconception that was corrected is that these assessment are not for just the students, infact it is also for the teachers, for whom once they get the feedbacks have to act upon to change the strategies of their teaching, to something that would better suit the needs of the students.

Another important thing is that the assessment should be a cyclic process i.e. assessment – feedback – change – assessment – feedback – and so on. The teacher should always clearly deliver the syllabus and the objectives to the students so they can work in the intended direction and can check their alignment with the objectives to improve, thus the self-assessment.

Thus I would conclude that this course was a strategy provider for me & I would deeply thank our esteemed Dr. Lou for her support and strategies.

“Assessment is today’s means of modifying tomorrow’s instructions”

Making assessment and utilizing the feedback to enhance the teaching-learning process is one of the key successful tool for a teacher. All the teachers really work hard and they have the very best for Making assessment and utilizing the feedback to enhance the teaching-learning process is one of the key successful tool for a teacher. All the teachers really work hard and they have the very best for each students in their hearts but a lot of paper work and large number of students to handle and thus it’s impossible for them to reach out to everyone hence teacher is a real hero in shaping the society.

Sometimes when the student fails the administration and the parents make it the fault of the teacher. It is indirectly the responsibility of the teacher but it’s not totally their fault as they are already overloaded because of the system. Hence we should make changes in the system.

Similarly, when the student gets negative feedback it’s the responsibility of the system and not only the teacher. As the peer, parents, classmates, neighbor’s kids all are the reason that make the failure a real failure. Hence here too we need to change the system and not the teacher because failing & making mistakes is normal. And no one is perfect so there is always space for improvement.

There are enormous types of assessments that is at the disposal of the designer/ educator that can be utilized at various stages of teaching. Like internal-external, formal-informal, traditional-nontraditional, reflective, authentic, alternative, performance-based, differential assessments. But are they being used in the class-room? The answer to this is that either the teacher does not have enough training or lacks the skills to see it or it can be due to background of the learner or teacher. The other reason is that the administration sets some ground goals & puts too much pressure on the teacher for certain goals that has conflict with the way the teacher wants to groom the learners. Hence the teacher does not get enough time for all the assessments or make cyclic form of assessments.

Other-times we just see that teaching is just considered as source of income and as a profession thus the passion to work the extra mile and thus make that extra effort to uplift the skills of the student is not made.

The only way the assessment works if it is well planned and cyclic process. It’s the teachers decision at the end, to which assessment is being used, as every learner is unique and every circumstance is different hence the combination of assessment to be used is different this implies that no assessment has greater value over the other, it cannot be debated if traditional assessment has more values or more effective than non-traditional assessment as both are important in their own place of use.

Finally I hope that myself and my fellow future educators find the time to properly implement and we can influence the administration to let the educators make decision if the final exam is the traditional written or it is spread across the whole semester and the grades only partially depends on the final exam.

The idea of self-analysis in any discipline or trade of life, helps us to carter for improvement in learning to understand the objectives and map the process in which we want to complete the objective and thus critical thinking, hence self-assessment is an important tool that which, if performed in the right way will give, crucial enhancement for the students and it will no doubt nurture their skills in the right direction especially since now-a-days the kids want to be independent. This tactic would allow them to manage resources with time and learn their weakness and get a chance towards improving them.

Sometimes we want the help of our peer’s and wish… if only we could share that project or research with them, it would be such a big help. This idea of peer-assessment is greatly helpful in helping the students work in team and thus develop team spirit along with to understand the measurement of contribution from each peer in the group and thus it can lead to work load sharing in right proportion. Indirectly it also helps in making friends with fellow students.

Thus educators should make a plan to help the students develop this skills by providing them with correct guidelines and understanding for both self & peer-assessment.

There are various types of assessment that helps the teaching and learning process. Before the idea of assessment would mean the grades in final exam which would help to move on to the next level. But the eye opener is that assessment is definite for upgrading the skills of the students and not just help in determining the exam grade.

There are various types of assessment at different stages of teaching & learning. Some of them helps the teacher change their teaching strategy while some helps the students change their learning strategy. The overall cumulative of assessment is for the teacher & the parents to check the work of the children.

Two things that are sure viz firstly that assessment is a cyclic process and secondly assessment should be aligned to achieve anything. Which means aligning the learning objectives and working step-by-step towards achieving the end goal.

Assessment can be accomplished in many ways, it can be a test, group activity, oral & written test, lab test, etc. but the idea is to have an idea of the present competence of the students and consequently look for area of improvement. This then implies that there should be more than one assessment to check the effectiveness of the strategy employed for the first assessment hence cyclic process or multiple assessment process is employed for continuous improvement.

But we have to consider that the teacher is usually over burdened with the overall activity that the management is expecting the teacher to accomplish in that term and this sometimes overwhelms the teacher to an extent that one assessment is all that is utilized to grade the students, which only tends to make the student focus not on the skills that ought to have developed but more on the “exam oriented preparation”.

Hence we should equip the teachers with a profound knowledge and training of utilizing the assessments for improving the teaching & learning process, hence improving the skills of the students and developing the weakness of each students.

“Everybody is a genius, but if we judge a fish by its ability to climb tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”

The idea of assessment is to get the general layout or the situation in hand. Every profession has their assessment methodologies which relies on various process like the doctors various tests, the IT takes the diagnostic test, etc.. likewise the teacher is also supposed to take the assessment of the students. Now there can be variation in the procedure or the technique of this but the result is to understand the students better and knit the learning process to the need of the students. Hence increasing the effectiveness and better management of the time.

The assessment can be made fun by different interactions technique or it can be just made by test sheet, but the whole idea is to get the teacher ahead of the students which will help them to better find the right tune for each students and thus by making the learning process more definite.

Assessment & evaluations are two sides of the same coin because we evaluate to have assessment over the situation.

Hoping to have a fruitful and educative time this semester with my classmates and estimated teacher.

Thank you for visiting my blog

“Never discourage anyone who makes progress, no matter how slow”

For the non-teaching staff there is an assumption that the teacher seems to be a person who is supposed to explain a subject to the students, where the life of a teacher starts and ends in the classroom and that it is a profession which is supposed to be easy and not that tough compared to other professions like the engineer or doctors. This is supposedly the traditional view that has been assumed so far but after getting into this course I came across so many definitions and theories that it’s hard to see a teacher to be “just” a teacher.

The complexity of all the theories in the learning process and the understanding of the ability of the learners are very deep, without which a teacher can never be a quality teacher. Teaching is a passion that has to be felt by the educator, there are rules to the game but there is no specific path that defines success. Every individual had their own style or path into understanding the learner’s capability and moving forward to support the learner reach their goal with their maximum potential. I always thought that once a teacher becomes a teacher their level of knowledge might become saturated and they don’t need to upgrade with the moving time, but here again I saw that those teacher that are flexible and can move forward by accepting changes and new tools are contributing more and have more potential than those that are of fixed mind set.

This course has given me the tools that are required to move in the education field, hence it’s the first milestone that has been accomplished. I can say that this was the journey that is supposed to lead and open doors to more journeys to come in the order.  I am deeply thankful to both our honorable teachers for their guidance, support, explanation, understanding and patience. Honorable because there is no doubt that teaching and grooming younger mind is an Honor and the position is honorable. I am also grateful for my classmates, batch mates, group mates for their extended support, explanation and contribution to my journey as the wall is never one brick but many bricks together. As I am not a teacher, I hope this new turning point in my life would be beneficial to my society to make it a better learning place where the object is to learn but with passion and commitment.

“We are not just teachers, we are the managers of the world’s greatest resource: Children”

There are various theories that which defines the understanding to a better learning process in a class room. The idea of this theory is to understand the learning capability of learner and then push them or support them to go higher, with the help of the learner’s imagination. The educator in this theory will help in guided support to the learner who in term will move on to the next level of learning.

The present education system is used in spoon feeding the learner and going about the same rhythm, without any flexibility, i.e. the teacher could be avoiding setting clear goals, guided instructions or correcting students misconceptions which is not the idea nor is it a recommended practice. And the educators or the institutes do not encourage the use of modern technology or the idea of learner-centered means of teaching.

The educator should be open to changes and they should try their best to emphasize high quality examples, student interaction and so on. It is important for the teacher to understand the learner’s behavior and how they conceive and react to a new information, which in turn would give the idea of how to proceed.

Guided discovery would make the learner move in the right direction and can sometimes surprise the educator with the outcome. For example if we assume that the learner is a ball and the educator is the stick that guides the ball, then it can be deduced that the work of the stick is to just move or push to ball to the right direction of the goal and not be the ball that moves and gains experience with every move.

Hence the constructivist principles help the educator understand the value of the thinking of the learner and not just spoon feed them, but to act as a scaffolding whenever and wherever required.