Formative Assessment & Feedback
Last updated on 2023-08-21 | Edit this page
Overview
Questions
- Why is formative assessment so essential in a lesson?
- What role does feedback play in iterative lesson development?
- How is the iterative aspect of lesson development incorporated into Collaborative Lesson Development Training?
Objectives
By the end of this session, participants should be able to…
- explain the importance of feedback to an iterative lesson development process
Reading List
- CLDT episode: Designing Assessments
- CLDT episode: Preparing to Teach
- CLDT episode: Reflecting on Trial Runs
- Lesson Pilot Workshops - Information for Lesson Developers from The Carpentries Handbook
- (optional) Refresh your memory of sections 4.4 (Develop assessments to ensure progression) & 4.5 (Evaluate course effectiveness) of Course design: Considerations for trainers - a Professional Guide by Allegra Via et al, 20201 (part of reading list for a previous session)
- (optional) The Exercise Types section of Teaching Tech Together by Greg Wilson
Discussion Questions
- What are different formative assessment strategies that can help diagnose issues with the lesson? Discuss the effectiveness of those strategies. Give some examples of what actionable feedback might look like.
- How do you think the optimal ratio of time spent on teaching and exercises changes as learner expertise increases? E.g. do you think a novice lesson will include more content to be taught and less time devoted to challenges/discussions, compared to an intermediate lesson on a similar topic?
- What are some advantages and disadvantages of requiring trainees to teach (some of) their new lessons as part of their training?
- How complete do you like a lesson to be before you teach it for the first time?
- Some trainees are reluctant to trial incomplete or unstructured material, feeling a lack of confidence at being able to improvise in response to questions/unexpected results, or fill in steps in the teaching examples on the fly. What guidance would you give to a trainee, to help them find a balance between preparing lesson content and taking an opportunity to gather feedback by teaching it?
- What strategies could we encourage trainees to use, to convert the feedback they gather when teaching a lesson into actionable recommendations for improving it?
Homework/Reading for Next Week
- Homework: Read CLDT episode: Example Data and Narrative and comment on https://github.com/carpentries/lesson-development-training/issues/210 to share your thoughts on whether this content should appear earlier in the curriculum.
- CLDT episode: Collaborating with Your Team
- CLDT episode: Collaborating with Newcomers
- Greg Wilson’s Blogpost on Martha’s Rules
Key Points
- The effectiveness of a lesson can only be assessed by teaching it.
- Direct and indirect feedback collected while teaching should be used to improve the lesson for next time.
- Trainees are required to try teaching a section of their new lesson in a “trial run” during the break in Collaborative Lesson Development Training.
Via A, Palagi PM, Lindvall JM et al. Course design: Considerations for trainers – a Professional Guide [version 1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research 2020, 9:1377 (document) (https://doi.org/10.7490/f1000research.1118395.1)↩︎