Teaching Thoughts

Working through the online assessment system for our Cisco Network Academy Programme has made me realise how much more thought tends to be put into online delivery systems for the student experience than for the administration of the system. It takes my stdent a couple of clicks to open an assessment and then it's all point & click. To enable the assessments and, even worse, to change them is a task of mamoth proportions.

A current debate raging on the instructors site is whether to increase the maximum allowable time for online module tests from a day to something sensible (for those of us that use them as formative assessments) like a week. The split seems to be along the lines of shools vs adult ed - schools want the exams restricted to class use, proctored exams whilst anyone using the academy in adult/further education want to be able to let the students use them as and when they like to reinforce their learning and understanding. A classic clash of Pedagogy meets Androgogy and never the twain...

Understanably those school teachers that use the exam for summative assessment want secure "uncheatable" exams. That obviously clashes with the adult educators who don't care if the students check to see the answers as long as they are learning from them. The problems occur when students from the latter model choose to post cheat sheets for those students in the former regeime.

The answer would seem to be the same as for those teachers that complain that the internet allows pupils to chet at essay questions - adapt your assessment model to one that precludes such practices. Adopt some of the features of Androgogy - make your pupils responsible for their learning and find some alternatives to replace the module tests that show research skills and the ability to think critically, synthesis information and to produce interesting solutions to problems using good methodology. Possibly a radical approach and may involve more work in the short term, but isn't it more rewarding for pupils and teacher than ticking boxes?