Using Assessments Before the Course
Using some assessments such as a pretext, can assist you with where your students are in the learning process. Even if your assessment is some questions that just require each student to verbalize their answer so that it doesn't become a stress of taking a test time of situation. It helps with where you want to maybe adjust in your learning options.
Ghia,
Pretesting is effective if the instructor is able to find useful benefit from the results. I'll do pretesting mainly when I'm unfamiliar with the degree of prior learning. This is when pretesting helps me plan my classes.
Barry Westling
Yes, this is a good idea. I myself do a pre-assessment to my students. This helps me see where they are.
Diane,
Two things. One is, I think we have to relate to our students where they are, and at what ever level they present to us. The second is staying close to course objectives and daily learning goals. Merging these two elements, an instructor will accomplish the most for the majority of students. There's likely always going to be a few stragglers who'll need extra help, and we should be prepared to work with these students. Pre-assessment really shows trends of the entire class, so I use whatever information I can from that, but don't rely soley on the information. Classes are dynamic, and we need to be creative and use whatever we can to reach our students.
Barry Westling
When the student population is widely varied in every way A(experience, background, age etc and the assessment shows the variety, how do you determine the group to teach to based on the assessment information? It is very difficult to hold the attention of everyone in the class that is widely varied. Does a pretest really help that much in a situation like this?
Aarti,
I will create questions from the course objectives. These can be more broad in scope, more so than the more specific kind of assessment that will like be used for quizzes and tests during the course. A pre-assessment just helps an instructor get a good, general idea about the level of knowledge most of their students possess from prior learning.
Barry Westling
What type of questions should I include on an assessment? I teach Nutrition, Math, and Anatomy and Physiology. Should I anticipate that the students have some background about these courses? some of my students are very young while some are in their fifties changing careers.
Aarti Savoor
Kelly,
This sounds like a good idea. Students freeze when we say "test". If we can minimize the effects of the testing process in the minds of the students, we can diminish the freeze and truely measure learning.
Barry Westling
