be part of both formative and summative
assessment of these key elements of
student performance.
Key aspects of performance relate to the
exploration of the origins of the source,
analysis of its qualities as a source, and its
relation to a wider set of information.
Successful formative assessment helps
students to internalise questions and
question styles. For summative
assessment, we expect students to ask
questions about the nature of the
information source. The originator can be
important – dietary advice from Kellogg’s
should be treated more cautiously than
advice from the British Medical
Association. Who created it? For what
purpose? From what perspective was this
written? The poor quality of much of the
information on the web can be a virtue,
pedagogically, because students see the
sense in challenging the authority of any
source, and can do so easily by considering
alternative sources (eg Downes and
Zammit 2000).
Skills in analysing documents in terms of
their style and their use of particular
rhetorical devices, and in creating
documents for different audiences and in
different writing genres, are being
developed and used in English (and
sociology and philosophy at university
level). Again, the ubiquitous use of web
sources provides both a rationale for the
value of these analytic and creative
activities, and a rich source of resources
for assessment purposes.
The web makes it easy to compare and
contrast different interpretations of ‘the
same’ events by different ‘news’ providers,
and by the same provider over time. In
terms of assessment, students can be
asked to compare and contrast different
presentations, and to describe the
evolution of a news event over time. This
requires analysis of the way that evidence
is selected, and the ways that ‘events’ are
reconstructed over time.
A further key aspect of knowledge use is
the ability to relate a particular source to a
larger body of knowledge. It will always be
important for learners to develop rich
schemas of knowledge – facts, skills, and
procedures and their interconnections – as
the basis for judging the value or
otherwise of putative new information, or a
theoretical account. In science, a simple
example is a digital image of a mammal
with horns and claws. Students are
expected to say it is most unlikely, because
horns are associated with herbivores, and
claws with carnivores. At a higher level of
abstraction, students might be asked to
resolve famous conflicts in scientific ideas,
in terms of what was known at the time.
For example, Lord Kelvin – probably the
most distinguished scientist of his day –
argued against the theory of evolution, on
the grounds that the timescale was
impossible. The core of the Earth is largely
molten, but if the Earth were really the
millions of years old needed for
evolutionary processes to work, it would
have cooled down long ago. What didn’t he
know (or is his criticism valid)? The web is
a source of information that challenges
current knowledge – students can be
asked to relate ‘breaking’ research to a
wider set of knowledge. The recent scare
over the MMR vaccine (and the damage
that will be done to children by an underanalysed
and over-publicised piece of
research) provides an example.
A vivid example of summative evaluation
which requires both a deep knowledge schema and powerful skills in knowledge
deconstruction and reconstruction is
provided by a final |
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undergraduate
examination at Goldsmith’s University on
the art history course, where students are
presented with two pictures, side by side,
which they are to compare and contrast.
They are required to name the artist,
deconstruct the iconography, and interpret
each work in its historical context. This
could be presented via ICT, and could be
extended to film, and to other contexts.
Another approach to supporting reflection
about knowledge acquisition and creation
is to incorporate assignments that require
a reflective account of the process of
creating some artefact (object or written).
Students can be asked process questions
about sources of information – ways to find
good sources (perhaps in the form of
‘advice to someone with a similar job to
do’), and about the sources themselves.
They can be asked about problems faced,
and the ways they were solved, in these
‘meta-learning’ essays.
‘Open-web’ examinations offer a parallel
to open-book examinations. One virtue
of such examinations is that they are
more ‘authentic’ than conventional
examinations, in that, outside educational
contexts, one rarely has to answer a
substantive question without any
resources. They allow the examiner to set
a broader range of questions, because
students are not expected to retain all
the relevant information in memory.
An adaptive strategy for success on
such examinations is to develop metaknowledge
of the whole area, and to index
sources very carefully. A large information
bank with no index is of little use. Compare
the preparation necessary for this sort of
examination with the ‘cramming’ strategy’
that can be effective when preparing for
conventional examinations. There, the
danger is that students hold information
in a relatively temporary state for the
purpose of the examination, then forget
the information once the examination is
over. Open-web examinations are likely to
have desirable ‘consequential validity’ –
that is to say, are likely to lead to desirable
learning (and learning strategies). The
unpopularity of open-book examinations
(which probably arises because they
require serious thought about the subject
matter) is likely to apply equally to openweb
examinations. The potential for
fraudulent behaviour by students (such as
e-mailing for advice in situations where
the purpose of testing is to assess the
ability to search the web, or searching the
web when the purpose of the assessment
is to assess ‘networking’ skills) means
that student activities will need to be
constrained in appropriate ways.
Nevertheless, open-web assessment
should be explored further.
Analysing and improving cognitive
processes: interactive whiteboards can
provide the facility to work as a whole
class on a problem or simulation, then to
replay and critique the sequence of
actions. This provides the opportunity to
discuss seemingly abstract concepts such
as ‘strategy’ and exemplify them with
concrete examples. Analogies with the
analysis of games (eg tennis) can make the
activity seem natural in class (of course,
analysis of on-screen video of ongoing
games is a specific example of the sorts of
analyses being described here). The longterm
intention is to help students develop
metacognitive skills that will be applicable
in a wide variety of situations. By looking at
different solution attempts, students can
be asked high-level questions such as
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open-web
examinations
are likely to lead
to desirable
learning
(and learning
strategies) |
