P507 Assessment in Schools (Fully, Online, #6837, 3 credits)

Summer, 2017, First Six Week Term, May 9-June 16

Indiana University Learning Sciences

Daniel Hickey, Professor and Program Coordinator, IU Learning Sciences Program

This course help educators, faculty, administrators, and researchers understand and improve student assessment. It is relevant to K-12, higher education, and informal contexts. Personalized curricular aims are used to develop professional competencies in three modules: assessment practices (item formats), assessment principles (e.g., validity and bias), and assessment policies (e.g., standardization and evaluation).

Early Birder Notes: As of April 14, the course is published.  However, the eText of the 2017 Eighth edition for the course is not yet available. Copies of the 2014 Seventh Edition chapters for Assignments 1-4 are included and are sufficient for getting started. There are small parts of several assignments that require access to the Eight Edition. A scan of the 8th Edition chapters will likely be added by April 18th if the delays persist.

Quickstart Guide: While you are expected to eventually read the syllabus, you can also just go straight to assignment 0 below (or left) and get started.  It is ungraded but it is due Thursday May 11. The first graded assignment is due Friday May 12.  Thereafter you will have an assignment due every Friday and Tuesday for six weeks.

Special Notes for Summer 2017: This course has been taught in a different platform since 2013 and this is the first time it has been taught in Canvas.  As such there may be a few setting that were missed, typos in instructions, etc.  Do not hesitate to alert me if you see something amiss. There are lots of little settings and such in Canvas. I have reviewed the assignments in this new version carefully but still may have missed a few things. However, the item bank for the new edition still has not been released.  I will use the quizzes drawn mostly from the item bank from the 2014 edition.  The quizzes have been carefully reviewed but it is expected that some items that prove particularly difficult will be removed.

Also note that this is a three credit course that is normally taught over 15 weeks compressed into six weeks.  You will have two assignments due per week.  Technically speaking, a three credit course is supposed to represent 180 hours of learning (12 hours x 15 weeks).  While you will not need 30 hours a week to complete this course (6 weeks x 30 hours = 180), you should be prepared for a relatively high workload.  All of the assignments have been streamlined and some elements were made optional for this course. Furthermore, exam scores will be curved to adapt to the performance of this particular class.  If you are working full time while taking this class you can expect to be quite busy for the next six weeks. Please use your time wisely and don't get behind.

Instructor

I am a Professor and Program Coordinator with the Learning Sciences Program at Indiana University. I study assessment, motivation, and accountability, mostly as they related to online learning and digital credentials, and mostly using newer sociocultural approaches to learning and cognition.  I completed my doctorate in Psychology (Cognitive Studies) at Vanderbilt University and completed a two year postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Performance Assessment at Educational Testing Service.  I have  taught this course dozens of times since around 2000.  It has been extensively refined over the years to ensure mastery of educational assessment as efficiently as possible.

Course Communication

Nearly all course communication should occur within the course.  There are discussion forums for course questions or issues. These forums trigger send daily digest of emails to me  If you post a question or have an issue and have not gotten a response in 24 hours, contact me from within Canvas, ideally with a message that includes a link to the URL for the message.  If you encounter something very serious and timely (like a problem with an exam), consider email me at dthickey@indiana.edu or even texting me at 812-322-3436. 

Course Content

The course is fully online.  While there are no synchronous activity, there are regular wikifolio assignments that are completed twice a week.  Students are expected to engage with peers and the instructor via threaded discussion that take place directly on completed student work. You will first define a curricular aim that embodies your professional experience, interests, and aspirations. You will develop specific competencies and become proficient at productively discussing three aspects of assessment:

• Assessment Practices. You will learn to use the guidelines for creating common classroom assessment items and formats for an educational standard of your choosing.
• Assessment Principles. You will understand the principles of validity, reliability, and bias and be able to use them to enhance the summative and formative functions of your assessments.
• Assessment Policies. This concerns the policies around assessment and accountability, with a particular focus on what teachers, schools, and policy makers do with evidence of learning from assessments. You will understand these policies and learn how to use them to address everyday challenges of assessment practice. Reflecting current policy issues in the US and elsewhere, particular attention is directed at the use of assessment to evaluate instruction and teaching.

 In each of these three areas, you will complete three or four “wikifolio” assignments and a brief quiz. The course is not a traditional "distance education" class. In addition to understanding these guidelines, concepts, and policies and using them in practice, you will be able to more deeply engage in professional dialogue with other professionals about using and improving student assessment. There is a large emphasis on interacting with one another.

Textbook

The text will ordered via IU’s eText program, which will allow students to access the electronic version of the textbook for the lowest possible price.  Do not purchase the textbook.  You will be charged $27.63 on your bursars account for the etext (rather than the publishers $78.33 cost).  It appears that you will have an option to purchase a print copy of the textbook for $20 from Pearson.

Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know. James Popham, 8^th Edition (2017). Pearson ISBN-9780134029498

Note that the text uses examples K-12 contexts and US schools. However, none of those elements will be on the exams and you will be personalizing the guidelines from this course for your own professional context. As such you can simply overlook the irrelevant content. 

Course Organization

The organization of this course is quite simple. While it will likely be different than other online courses, it is based on current Learning Sciences principles

• In the ungraded Assignment 0 will first define a curricular aim that reflects your work or interests in education or instruction.
• In each wikifolio assignment you will further refine your curricular aim and apply concepts from one or more textbook chapters to that curricular aim.
• At the end of each of the three course modules you will take a time-limited online quiz. The quizzes include challenging “best answer” items that can’t be looked up in the time provided. While they are timed exams, students who draft, discuss and reflect on their wikifolios should do quite well on the exams.

Assignment Structure and Deadlines

The assignment structure and the wikifolios will be new to most of you. But they are really quite simple and will follow the same format for each assignment.  In the full term you will complete one wikifolio each week, while in the short term course you will complete two wikifolios each week.  The due dates are on the assignments in canvas

• Each assignment includes a brief video provided by the instructor and is organized around one or more chapters from the text. In the videos the instructors models the kind of contextual application to his own curricular aims that you are expected to carry out yourself.
• Each week you will reiterate your curricular aim and complete several activities that related to that curricular aim. The assignments involve relatively extensive writing but the writing itself is not formally graded.
• Each assignment includes an open ended self-assessment that you will use to see if you are ready to move on to the next assignment.
• Each wikifolio is completed by posting three brief reflections at the bottom. Three module quizzes assess the extent to which you have taken away enduring understanding of the key ideas. The reflection is completed after the deadline for posting each assignment.  The deadline for the reflection is the deadline for posting the subsequent assignment.
• The content of the wikifolios is not directly graded. Rather, you are awarded points for completing the draft wikifolio by the deadline and posting coherent reflections by the subsequent deadline. If you post both on time and the reflections are coherent you can expect full points.

In order to foster discussion and keep students from getting behind, the deadline for posting wikifolios is strictly enforced. You will lose one point per day each day you are late. If you have a documented excuse for being late, you must mail or email the documentation to the instructor, and the documentation must include a phone number which can be used for verification purposes.

Module Quizzes (15 points each)

There will be three quizzes, one for each of the three major sections of the course. These will be timed exams and will primarily be used to ensure that students are engaging with the readings, peers, and the instructor, and to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the course. The quizzes are based on new items from the 8th Edition item bank and have not been used before in this class.  The items will be reviewed and some may be removed because they are too difficult or misbehave.  If no student gets a perfect score on the exam the scores will be adjusted accordingly so that the highest score will be worth full points, and that the class average is around 85%. To maintain test security, item-level feedback is not provided. It is likely the exam scores will be adjusted upwards after all students complete the exam

Grading Policies

Students will be graded for completing 11 weekly wikifolios (5 points each or 55 points) and three module quizzes (15 points each).  Points are assigned for wikifolios every week after the reflection deadline. Each wikifolio is worth five points but you must complete the reflection to get points for the wikifolio. The actual content of the wikifolio is not graded.  Students can expect to get full points for their wikifolios so long as they post a complete draft (no including the reflections) by the deadline. If your wikifolio and your reflection do not actually show evidence of the consequential, contextual, and/or collaborative engagement, you can lose those points (this happens most often for collaborative engagement). Grades are as follows 97 = A+, 93 = A, 90 = A-, 87 = B+, 83 = B, 80 = B-, etc.

Schedule

Assignments are due on Fridays and Tuesdays.  The actual dates are included in the assignments in Canvas.

Additional course information, include your rights as a student, can be found here.