Benefit of assessing EVALUATE

Does your course (or the course that will follow your course) require learners to be able to make judgments based on industry standards and/or criteria? Assessing this ability, produces evidence of the degree to which competence is achieved helps a learner to identify area for further development and/or corrective action.

Some of the ways the EVALUATE level can be accomplished could ask a learner to;

• detect inconsistencies within a process,
• determine whether a scientist’s conclusions follow from observed data,
• if presented multiple possible methods could judge which is the best way to solve a given problem, or
• use disciplinary criteria to determine the quality of a product.

Assessment OF Evaluate example #1

Do you have a series of activities in to your course that you hope will help your learners connect concepts and skills. Do you want to assess the degree to which they can apply concepts introduced in to their own practice (in practicum, in classroom, in the development of products)? Consider an e-portfolio assignment that asks your learners to make these things transparent.

You can decide on the number of entries required but each e-portfolio entry (different from a blog) should contain three things: a description of the artifact (an introduction), the item/artifact itself, and a reflection on what you learned from it that will have an impact on your work in future. The (e) implies electronic so must be built by learners using (ideally) any online platform they prefer, however an offline (paper based) portfolio is not a standard practice.

An example of an e-portfolio from a school of education course (worth 30% of the course mark):

An example e-portfolio

Assessment AS Evaluate example #1

The Knowledge survey: A knowledge survey does not solicit content-based answers; rather, students are asked to rate their level of confidence in attempting to answer a given survey question. Questions are directly connected to course outcomes. Knowledge surveys can be implemented at points (or just before) in the course where a course outcomes should have been achieved to a sufficient level (eg. just before a mid-point exam where 3 of 5 course outcomes will be assessed). Standard multi-choice responses on a knowledge survey indicate whether a learner;

(3) could answer this question with full confidence

(2) could get most of the credit for this question

(1) could get some partial credit for this question

(0) could not begin to answer this question right now.

Directions for the assessment should indicate the minimum number of total points is sufficient to ‘pass’ the self assessment.

Assessment AS Evaluate example #2

Peer review: A learner group may be asked to design a build/activity/landscape which can take a while to refine. An effective assessment technique to aid learners in reflection on their work in relation to that of others, and apply assignment criteria to works in progress (provided by peers) is the peer review process. This process also touches on professional/constructive communication as added benefit.

Assessment FOR Evaluate example #1

The collaborative survey: Learners are presented with a case (current world event, old world way or thinking, law which is contentious, etc) worth seeking further information about. Learners will be asked to submit one question to add to the survey that will be sent to a cross-sample of those invested/knowledgeable about the case. Once a draft list is created, learners will then be asked to vote ‘up’ or ‘down’ the questions (most likely to elicit useful information to least likely to elicit useful information) until a final survey is created.

There is no need to send out the survey for this activity. Learner can then be asked to discuss, if the survey resulted in responses, how they would use the data gathered. The process learners go through, the resulting conversation, etc can be used to check for understanding, and as an activity participate the faculty member can inject further information, and redirect where needed.