Assessment and Grading System, Essay Example

The general aim for my Dream Class is to “examine the concepts, tools and techniques as well as their application for effective and efficient education for students with blindness or visual impairments”. Several of the projects I listed in the syllabus included assessment of inputs and outputs to each project management stage which include budgets, risk management plans, schedules, work breakdown structures, scope management plans, and post-implementation reviews. In this assignment, I will specifically discuss the budget planning project providing a detailed explanation of the assignment and a rubric that will assess the results and provide student feedback.

This assignment will address several of the CEC Standards & Outcomes for Project Management. Standard #2 – Individual Learning Differences, Standard #6 – Communication, and Standard #10 – Collaboration will be assessed during this assignment because students will need to develop a presentation based on a specific audience, demonstrate both oral and written communication, and participate in team based reviews.

The class will be broken down into groups, with four students assigned to each group. The goal of this project is to detect the needs of visually impaired versus non-visually impaired groups in a number of different settings. Each group will be able to select a real life environment/work setting to assess where disparity between these two groups may be an issue. Groups may not have overlapping topics. All of the groups will then be required to create a budget that summarizes the materials that the school or work place of choice would need to educate or train a group of blind people in addition to a group of visually proficient people over the course of four years. All members of the individual group must be able to agree on the budget and its itemized listings. The group will then be asked to compare and contrast the differences in the budget between the two groups. Each group will then be asked to present its findings in the form of a group PowerPoint presentation in front of the class. It is expected that students will find a major difference between the expense of training the visually impaired workers or students compared to the visually proficient groups. After all of the groups have presented, the students will be given a take home assignment that asks them to re-examine the budget they made with their classmates and determine if they are able to make the two budgets equal and what the ramifications of this will be. This assignment will be pass/fail and used mainly for class discussion; a grade of pass will be awarded if the student writes a 2 full pages on a pertinent topic.

The total points awarded for this project will be 100 points; 60 points for the budget and 40 points for the in-class presentation. For the budget, 60 points will be awarded for the completion of a correctly formatted budget that considers a complete set of the items that are needed for the training. 45 points will be awarded for a correctly formatted budget that seems to be missing a few items that are needed for the training. 30 points will be awarded for a budget that has a few mathematical errors and has a complete set of items that are needed for the training. 15 points will be awarded for a budget that has substantial mathematical errors and is missing items that are needed for the training. 0 points will be awarded for an impertinent assignment. For the in-class presentation, students who made a detailed PowerPoint and had all group members participate will receive 40 points. Students who made a detailed PowerPoint and had some group members participate will receive 30 points. Students who had a minimal PowerPoint and had all group members participate will receive 20 points. Students who were not able to perform at this minimum will receive a grade of 0.

I hope that students who complete this assignment will be able to understand that teaching the visually impaired is very different from educating visually proficient. This will help them begin to understand the kind of effort they will have to put forth in the classroom and in designing their lessons. This project was meant to be an introductory lesson that will account for 10% of the total course grade.

Module Reflection

The topic that interested me the most in Module 2 was the concept of testing. Therefore, I aim to further define how to properly use testing to assess the skills of my students. It is frequently difficult to assess the difference between tests that are considered too difficult or too easy during their initial write-up; tests should be difficult enough to challenge the intellect of the students, while preventing students from becoming too frustrated. To determine the “perfect test” that will facilitate and assess the learning of my students, I decided to analyze three journal articles entitled “Creating Tests Worth Taking”, “Classroom Assessment Techniques”, and “Creating a System of Accountability”.

In “Creating Tests Worth Taking”, the author discusses many characteristics that separate “good tests” from “bad tests”. Ultimately, testing is not only meant to give the teacher an indicator of what his or her class is learning; it is also a chance for students to apply what they learned on their own. This part of the learning process is sometimes equally as important as classroom lessons. The author claims that one of the major problems involved with test taking is the teacher’s or test designer’s tendency to over-assess student knowledge and under-assess student know-how with knowledge. Therefore, test makers should aim to create “authentic simulations rich in contextual detail, devise meaningful tasks, and develop tool kits of exemplary tasks for other teachers’ use” (Grant, 1992).

In “Classroom Assessment Techniques”, the authors define classroom assessment an “approach designed to help teachers find out what students are learning in the classroom and how well they are learning it (Angelo et al., 2010)”. While I agree that this is important and necessary, I don’t think that rating students should be the absolute focus of testing. However, I do support their belief that “learning can and often does take place without the benefit of teaching”. As such, it is our job as educators to use every moment we spend with our students in the classroom to their advantage. In my opinion, this translates to providing test questions that assess students’ understanding of the concepts taught and ensuring that they can use this information in challenging real world situations. Success on such tests will demonstrate mastery of the concept; the students who do well will be much more likely to remember the information they learned and find it of use in the future. Based on this concept, I believe that it is equally important to assign formal tests that involve the application of information learned in addition to class group projects that will enable students to tackle even more difficult problems with the help of their peers.

“Creating a System of Accountability: The Impact of Instructional Assessment on Elementary Children’s Achievement Test Scores” emphasizes the importance of standardize testing across different socioeconomic areas (Meisels et al., 2003). We are able to use this data to determine what areas have the better students and schools and how we should reallocate resources to ensure that all children are able to achieve an equal education. Despite this usefulness, I do not believe that these exams should be used in any way to influence a child’s future. The paper summarizes and explains an elementary level standardized test in Iowa called the “Iowa Tests of Basic Skills”. Low-income, urban third and fourth graders tend to do worse on these exams compared to their peers. Usually, students of lower socioeconomic status attend schools on scholarships or choose to go to public schools. In many cases, they are unable to afford tutoring services that students in other areas are; the availability of such resources or lack thereof ultimately influences test performance. Therefore, it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that their students are able to use and apply the information learned in the classroom; even if they are unable to perform well on tests, it’s satisfactory to know that these students still learned the information conceptually even though they weren’t able to memorize facts. Although this article discussed elementary education, I believe that these topics are applicable to students at all age levels from kindergarten to adult.

References

Angelo TA; Cross KP. (2010). Classroom Assessment Techniques. Harford. Retrieved from http://ww2.harford.edu/LAC/pdf%20files/classroom_assessment_techniques%20Angelo%20Cross.pdf.

Masters Syllabus Project Management, Dream Class. (n.d.). Word File.

Meisels, Samuel J; Atkins-Burnett, Sally; Xue, Yange; Bickel, Donna DiPrima; Son, Seung- Hee; Nicholson, Julie. (2003). Creating a System of Accountability: The Impact of Instructional Assessment on Elementary Children’s Achievement Test Scores. Educational Policy Analysis Archives. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ680080

Wiggins, G. (1992). Creating Tests Worth Taking. Educational Leadership. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ444309