Q) The Emirate of Sharjah within the United Arab Emirates has decided that they want to fundamentally re-think their approach to summative assessment. They’ve called in both Lave and Schwartz to advise them. What do Lave and Schwartz recommend? What do they agree on? Where do they disagree?
A) Before starting to analyze the statement, I want to compare two assessments: formative and summative assessment. The formative assessment is more like part of the instructional process. It contains quizzes, observation, classwork, homework, writing. Thus, it has benefits to use while it is processing, we can modify and improve the lesson immediately. Whereas, summative assessment is determining at a particular point in time what students know and do not know. For example, final exam, end of chapter test, SAT test can be a summative assessment. It has benefits that we can use quantitative analysis to interpret more objective, rather than subjective opinions. The biggest difference between the two assessment is whether during or at the end of the lecture. Also, the method to measure the summative assessment has often data or score to check the students’ result of the efforts. With these clues, Lava and Schwartz need to show their opinions whether the decision that Emirate of Sharjah changes to summative assessment is right or not.
First, Schwartz seems to believe that summative assessment is not enough to evaluate the learning outcomes. He believes that preparation for learning (PFL) can focus on developing the better knowledge. In other words, the PFL focuses on ''extended learning" instead of one-shot assessment. For example, how PFL works is students’ abilities to learn the second program is from previous experience. Thus, it will not work if the first program is not working well. There is continuity of learning with the assessments. Another example is lived experience. Image if you spend time in a different country, you will keep meet the natives, collect the information, evaluate, and learn the way to live in that country. It is a sort of development process. He mentioned that in the PFL perspective, lived experiences can provide powerful resources for "knowing with" especially in science and mathematics subject. Thus, PFL is more like formative assessment. If Schwartz recommend to Emirates of Sharjah, he would not agree to approach summative assessment.
In addition, Lave supports situated learning which has characteristics of legitimate peripheral participation. Most of the situated learning is learning by doing. It is a similar concept as Schwartz’s PFL. The apprenticeship is the key term in this situated learning. The knowledge passed down one generation to next generation. This works well in history learning. Therefore, Both, Lave and Schwartz, will recommend to The Emirate of Sharjah not to change summative assessment if they are doing a formative assessment. Thus, I will assume if Schwartz and Lave recommend to the Emirate of Sharjah about changing assessment to summative, they would say it is not the proper way to change it. Also, United Arab Emirates consists of multiple races which they should keep on eyes to make better learning environments during the learning process.
However, there are certain areas where the summative assessment might work. For example, novice teachers who do not have preliminary experience may have benefits of using summative assessment. Since it requires lots of knowledge to build at the initial stage, it is better to gain the knowledge first.
Q) A researcher at Athabasca University is arguing that a heretofore unknown learning style – whether a student prefers immersive technology or not – can make a major impact on learning outcomes in the 21st century. What kind of evidence would Pashler demand before accepting this hypothesis? And if the hypothesis turned out to be true – preference for immersive technology impacts learning outcomes from immersive technology versus other approaches – how and where would Bloom incorporate this evidence into his Model of School Learning?
A) In order to convey education effectively, the researcher should find the right learning style for each student. It does not matter of unknown learning style or immersive technology. How it can have an impact on the students is a matter of how the teacher can match the student’s individual preference for study. Since the students all have difference level of education, background, their personality, thinking, intelligence, meta cognitive ability, and personality characteristics, suitable matching learning style is a core element to be succeeded in this project. It is because some students are more likely to watch the lecture to better comprehend the educational content which is regarded as a visual learner, or others are more likely listen and talk the lecture which is regarded as a verbal learner. Then, let’s take a look the Pashler’s article to investigate how he analyzed the learning style.
Pashler with their colleagues analyzed the concept of learning style. They elicited the conclusion that learning will be ineffective if learners receive instruction that does not take account of their learning style. Thus, individualizing of instruction can allow people to achieve a better learning outcome. In that sense, if the researcher customizes the immersive technology by individual task, it has slightly possibility to satisfy students’ education goal.
However, the substantial matter on the immersive environment is how the students are familiar to take the immersive technology such as a 3D immersive display, virtual reality, augmented reality because as aforementioned above, some students might not prefer to use the technology, which means not their learning style. Thus, before accepting the hypothesis, the test needs to conduct in order to get evidence by following what Pashler did. First, leaners must be divided into two or more groups (e.g., visual and auditory learners). Second, each group learning-style group must be randomly assigned to one of at least two different learning methods (e.g., immersive and non-immersive medium). Third, the participants will be given the same test of achievement. Fourth, the results need to be selected that the learning method that optimizes test performance of one learning-style group. Throughout the procedure, the researcher can determine whether the immersive technology can promote the students’ learning outcome or not.
Bloom incorporated the evidence from learning style from Pashler into his Model of school Learning because there are some situations where mastery learning approaches do not work well. Thus, in that sense, the evidence from Pashler’s learning style can be explained why the mastery learning does not work well in the certain situation. Even for mastery learning, in order to succeed, we should consider the learning situations and characteristics of student’s necessary. Bloom pointed out that all students can have mastery learning if they have appropriate prior and current conditions of learning. Lastly, Bloom optimistically asserted that best of education could be virtually provided to all students if the schools realize the differences of students’ characteristics and apply it to the model of school learning.
Q) online learning company wants to develop an adaptive learning system that helps students develop higher levels of grit. What recommendations would Duckworth give them? How about Skinner?
A) Grit is not a short-term achievement. It is perseverance and passion for long-term goals. According to Duckworth, after setting up the goal, the gritty individual sometimes takes over years to complete the tasks. Then, the first step of online learning company for developing an adaptive learning system to approach the high level of grit is getting to know the grit of each student. Thus, Duckworth would recommend having an interview and questionnaire to analyze the grit scale. The measure grit is not like IQ test. It is based on the big five traits such as extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism. Thus, the students will be measured their grit throughout grit scale.
The second step is if they measured the grit, they should set up the goal. According to Duckworth, grit should be something manageable goals to complete and allow for immediate feedback on performance. Thus, the students pursue goals without giving up. The goal should not be too easy or too difficult. It also should not deliberately set the goal for extremely long-term. Third, grit needs to push forward to maintain the goal. The students will need dedication to either implicitly or explicitly rewarding goals. Thus, in this process, they can check up their current level of grit and develop the further step with a full of grit.
While Duckworth talked about the grit for a long-term, Skinner will recommend reinforcement and punishment for short-term behavior. The students will have a reward if they have a good behavior. It can increase grit instantly, but it is doubtful whether the behavior keeps going for a long term. Also, grit is more like implicit motivation to take a catalyst role to move forward for the goal, but reinforcement strategy is controlled by explicit power or rewards. Thus, if Skinner recommends developing higher levels of grit, he might suggest a short-term powerful grit.
To summarize, at this time, recommendation from Duckworth would more powerful to increase higher level of grit rather than Skinner’s reinforcement.
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