Productive assessment - Essay Example

Productive Assessment The Active Learning concept is a learning technique that is used heavily within the assessment task. Active learning, according to El Paso Community College instructor Diane Starke, is the concept of having students participate directly in experimentation in order to permit them to experience the conclusions they arrive at as opposed to relying on lecture and “passive” listening as the primary instrument of the learning process. In the assessment task, the student Donald was asked to go out and price compact disc (CD) models.

This technique is an example of the “Doing” component of the Active Learning concept. Instead of the instructor explaining the technique of how to develop a price medium to Donald, the student was encouraged to go out and physically examine the products being priced. As a result he was able to see the different features and benefits that each product had to offer. Consequently, he could deduce the marketing rationale of why a certain model was more or less than another and what features one could expect to find on the model in the lower, median, and high end price ranges.

Dee Fink of the Oklahoma Instructional Development Program labels this approach “Doing” because Donald’s exposure to the products permits him to categorize them and create an appropriate hierarchy in his mind from which to delineate a value for each product that he can understand and remember. Dr. Charles Bonwell conducts Active Learning workshops where he helps school teachers learn this technique. According to Dr. Bonwell, the purpose of his workshops is to train instructors to move away from the classical approach of relying almost exclusively on the lecture as the primary learning tool to moving into an environment where the student participates directly in all aspects of his/her learning experience.

Bonwell says direct involvement, such as is illustrated when students in the assessment task utilized the “Observing” Active Learning technique to evaluate what library books were checked out and what pictures were on the page, is a much more successful learning model because “students remember what they understand better and they understand what means something to them. Dr. Bonwell states that when students are involved in the process of developing the data that sense of involvement and accomplishment provides a much stronger and more impactful learning experience that will stay with them much longer and much deeper.” Dr. Geoffery Pell participated in a study that compared Active Learning results with traditional passive listening techniques.

His study was conducted on high school students, undergraduate college students, and post graduate students on a number of occasions in different variable environments. Each time the results clearly demonstrated that the Active Listening participants strongly outperformed the participants who learned through traditional learning techniques. Pell’s study found that regardless of the academic level, socio-economic environment, and race and gender of students, the Active Listening participants were consistently able to remember more of what they studied in greater detail and were able to explain the components of their experimentation in a much more comprehensive fashion.

Bonwell and Pell agree that the strengths of the Active Listening approach is that it directly engages the students in the learning process which enhances their educational experience. Bonwell points out that since most people are either audio or visual learners, the components of Active Learning e.g. doing, observing, participating, etc., are much stronger methods of helping the student gain a greater understanding of the educational objective. Bonwell does point out that a drawback to Active Learning is that students do not always have the specific parameters from an experienced analyst on hand to guide their work and understanding.

As a result, there is always the possibility that their findings may produce invalid conclusions. Starke, Diane. 2009. Texas Collaborative for Teaching Excellence. Texas. http://www.texascollaborative.org/activelearning.htm Fink, Dee. 1999. University of Oklahoma Instructional Development Program. Oklahoma. http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/active.htm Bonwell, Charles PhD. 1995. George Washington University. Washington D.C. http://www.ydae.purdue.edu/lct/hbcu/documents/Active_Learning_Creating_Excitement_in_the_Classroom.

pdf Pell, Geoffery. 2001. The Statistical Analysis for Academic Programs as a Guide to Quality. Britain. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/bmaf/documents/publications/IJME/Vol1no3/Pell_Action_vs_trad_learning_%20in_%20MBA.pdf