Testing- What is Going on with this?

1. Testing- What is Going on with this? EMS EXPO 2010

2. Debbie Farnsworth,BBA, MEd, BEMTIC • Hill Career Academy • Basic EMT & MFR classes at Lansing Schools for 11 years • American Red Cross MFR classes for 2 years

3. Why testing? • According to WikiAnswers- “they do it to see how well you know the things that they have been teaching you all term, so they know that what they are teaching you is actually getting through.” • From my college days- to show that the cognitive has gotten through. It is a MEASUREMENT tool to justify the students grade.

4. So- why do we test? • To show they got it! • In EMS this should be both cognitive and Kinesthetic ! • Are there factors that should be taken into account- like environment, partners, test anxiety?? • What type of tests should we give?

5. Traditional vs Authentic • Found a website that I believe does a beautiful job of teaching about this • http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm • Some of the following slides will be taken from his work

6. Traditional Assessment • By "traditional assessment" (TA) I am referring to the forced-choice measures of multiple-choice tests, fill-in-the-blanks, true-false, matching and the like that have been and remain so common in education.  Students typically select an answer or recall information to complete the assessment. These tests may be standardized or teacher-created.  They may be administered locally or statewide, or internationally.

7. Authentic Assessment • An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated. Click the following links to see many examples of authentic tasks and rubrics.

8. Authentic Testing may also be called…. • Performance Assessment • Alternative Assessment • Direct Assessment • Any of those sound familiar???

9. Nice chart that he has on his website to sum things up! • Traditional -------------------------------- Authentic • Selecting a Response ------------------------------------ Performing a Task • Contrived --------------------------------------------------------------- Real-life • Recall/Recognition ------------------------------- Construction/Application • Teacher-structured ------------------------------------- Student-structured • Indirect Evidence -------------------------------------------- Direct Evidence

10. Traditional Assessment • In the TA model, the curriculum drives assessment.   "The" body of knowledge is determined first.  That knowledge becomes the curriculum that is delivered.  Subsequently, the assessments are developed and administered to determine if acquisition of the curriculum occurred

11. Authentic Assessment • Thus, in AA, assessment drives the curriculum.  That is, teachers first determine the tasks that students will perform to demonstrate their mastery, and then a curriculum is developed that will enable students to perform those tasks well, which would include the acquisition of essential knowledge and skills.  This has been referred to as planning backwards (e.g., McDonald, 1992).

12. Educational Argument… • If I were a golf instructor and I taught the skills required to perform well, I would not assess my students' performance by giving them a multiple choice test.  I would put them out on the golf course and ask them to perform.  Although this is obvious with athletic skills, it is also true for academic subjects.  We can teach students how to do math, do history and do science, not just know them.  Then, to assess what our students had learned, we can ask students to perform tasks that "replicate the challenges" faced by those using mathematics, doing history or conducting scientific investigation.

13. Next few slide from a consultant on testinghttp://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 • Authentic assessments require students to be effective performers with acquired knowledge. Traditional tests tend to reveal only whether the student can recognize, recall or "plug in" what was learned out of context. This may be as problematic as inferring driving or teaching ability from written tests alone. (Note, therefore, that the debate is not "either-or": there may well be virtue in an array of local and state assessment instruments as befits the purpose of the measurement.)

14. Authentic assessments present the student with the full array of tasks that mirror the priorities and challenges found in the best instructional activities: conducting research; writing, revising and discussing papers; providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. Conventional tests are usually limited to paper-and-pencil, one- answer questions.

15. Authentic assessments attend to whether the student can craft polished, thorough and justifiable answers, performances or products. Conventional tests typically only ask the student to select or write correct responses--irrespective of reasons. (There is rarely an adequate opportunity to plan, revise and substantiate responses on typical tests, even when there are open-ended questions). As a result, • * Authentic assessment achieves validity and reliability by emphasizing and standardizing the appropriate criteria for scoring such (varied) products; traditional testing standardizes objective "items" and, hence, the (one) right answer for each.

16. "Test validity" should depend in part upon whether the test simulates real-world "tests" of ability. Validity on most multiple-choice tests is determined merely by matching items to the curriculum content (or through sophisticated correlations with other test results).

17. Authentic tasks involve "ill-structured" challenges and roles that help students rehearse for the complex ambiguities of the "game" of adult and professional life. Traditional tests are more like drills, assessing static and too-often arbitrarily discrete or simplistic elements of those activities.

18. Nice Summary • The best tests always teach students and teachers alike the kind of work that most matters; they are enabling and forward-looking, not just reflective of prior teaching

19. Additional Reading! • Archbald, D. & Newmann, F. (1989) "The Functions of Assessment and the Nature of Authentic Academic Achievement," in Berlak (ed.) Assessing Achievement: Toward the development of a New Science of Educational Testing. Buffalo, NY: SUNY Press. • Frederiksen, J. & Collins, A. (1989) "A Systems Approach to Educational Testing," Educational Researcher, 18, 9 (December). • National Commission on Testing and Public Policy (1990) From Gatekeeper to Gateway: Transforming Testing in America. Chestnut Hill, MA: NCTPP, Boston College. • Wiggins, G. (1989) "A True Test: Toward More Authentic and Equitable Assessment," Phi Delta Kappan, 70, 9 (May). • Wolf, D. (1989) "Portfolio Assessment: Sampling Student Work," Educational Leadership 46, 7, pp. 35-39 (April).

20. College Life! • Ferris State University • Big push is MASTERY LEARNING! • According to Ferris- EVERY program should believe in Mastery Learning and use it! • Do we in EMS? Was that the purpose of some of the curriculum updates?

21. What the heck is it? • Mastery learning is learning a skill to the point that you understand it or master it. Mastery is usually considered anything over 80% accuracy. This is one person’s thoughts.

22. Wikipedia says • Mastery Learning is an instructional method that presumes all children can learn if they are provided with the appropriate learning conditions. Specifically, mastery learning is a method whereby students are not advanced to a subsequent learning objective until they demonstrate proficiency with the current one.

23. Explanation! • Mastery learning has nothing to do with content, merely on the process of mastering it, and is based on Benjamin Bloom's Learning for Mastery model, with refinements made by Block. Mastery learning may be implemented as teacher-paced group instruction, one-to-one tutoring, or self-paced learning with programmed materials. It may involve direct teacher instruction, cooperation with classmates, or independent learning. It requires well-defined learning objectives organized into smaller, sequentially organized units. Individualized instruction has some elements in common with mastery learning, although it dispenses with group activities in favor of allowing more able or more motivated students to progress ahead of others and maximizing teacher interaction with those students who need the most assistance.

24. http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/instruct/mastery.htmlhttp://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/instruct/mastery.html • Basic Principles: • Ninety percent of students can learn what is normally taught in schools at an A level if they are given enough time and appropriate instruction • Enough time means: • Time required to demonstrate mastery of objectives • Appropriate instruction means: • Break course into units of instruction • Identify objectives of units • Require students to demonstrate mastery of objectives for unit before moving on to other units • Grades may be determined by: • Actual number of objectives mastered • Number of units completed • Proficiency level reached on each unit • Any combination of above • Students can work at own pace if course is so structured, but mastery learning can be accomplished with group instruction.

25. Advantages • Students have prerequisite skills to move to next unit • Requires teachers to do task analysis, thereby becoming better prepared to teach the unit • Requires teachers to state objectives before designating activities • Can break cycle of failure (especially important for minority and disadvantaged students)

26. Disadvantages • Not all students will progress at same pace; this requires students who have demonstrated mastery to wait for those who have not or to individualize instruction • Must have a variety of materials for reteaching: • Must have several tests for each unit • If only objective tests are used, can lead to memorizing and learning specifics rather than higher levels of learning

27. Dr. Madeline Hunter • Gives great examples of how to become a mastery learning teacher! • http://nerds.unl.edu/pages/preser/sec/assessment/hunter.html

28. Differentiated Learning • Differentiated instruction (sometimes referred to as differentiated learning) involves providing students with different avenues to acquiring content; to processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and to developing teachingmaterials so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability. (from Wikipedi)

29. Deeper….. • Differentiated instruction, according to Carol Ann Tomlinson (as cited by Ellis, Gable, Greg, & Rock, 2008, p. 32), is the process of “ensuring that what a student learns, how he/she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he/she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning”. Differentiation stems from beliefs about differences among learners, how they learn, learning preferences and individual interests (Anderson, 2007). "Research indicates that many of the emotional or social difficulties gifted students experience disappear when their educational climates are adapted to their level and pace of learning."[2]

30. http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/differentiating.html • Brain research confirms what experienced teachers have always known:. • No two students are alike.  • No two students learn in the identical way.  • An enriched environment for one student is not necessarily enriched for another.  • In the classroom we should teach students to think for themselves. 

31. Summing it up? • Differentiating instruction means creating multiple paths so that students of different abilities, interest or learning needs experience equally appropriate ways to absorb, use, develop and present concepts as a part of the daily learning process. It allows students to take greater responsibility and ownership for their own learning, and provides opportunities for peer teaching and cooperative learning.

32. Some conclude • Mastery Learning and Differentiated Learning are pretty much the same thing. • The bottom line, is this what they expected us to do when they rewrote the curriculum? • Is this the thinking behind “suggested hours” for the Paramedic Curriculum? • Does it make a difference in testing?

33. Answers-- • YES! I believe that is why the curriculum was changed to “suggested hours”. It is opening the door for us to use these two concepts in EMS Education! • YES! It makes a difference for testing. If we use something like Layered Curriculum to get our students through, then we need to use both types of tests in order to prove that our students are ready for the EMS world.

34. Form of Testing? • Manufactured or our own? • 

35. Dr. Harry Wong • http://teachers.net/wong/APR10/ • When speaking- believes in “stealing” from each other-why do it yourself • My IC class, why reinvent the wheel? • So- why make all of your own tests? • Make sure you give credit when you “borrow/steel” others work!

36. Great Resource for New Teachers! • The Wongs have written The First Days of School, the best-selling book ever in education.  Over 3.3 million copies have been sold.  It is used in 102 countries, 2017 colleges, and most every new teacher induction program. • The new, fourth edition of The First Days of School includes: • An additional chapter on procedures • A new chapter on assessment with rubrics • A new chapter on Professional Learning Teams • A new chapter for administrators on implementation  • Additional information in Going Beyond Folders • A new DVD, Using THE FIRST DAYS OF SCHOOL, presented by Chelonnda Seroyer

37. Why reinvent? • Contact the book reps • Look over the tests questions- check them! • Pick the best • Give credit at the end of the test where the questions came from! • Use the ‘best of the best’ to design that perfect test!

38. Preparing our Students • Authentic- use the sheets that are out there! • Places you can buy tests to prepare for the National Written • Our job IS to do testing to PROVE that our students are prepared to handle the world of EMS!

39. THANKS! • ENJOY the rest of the Michigan 2010 EMS EXPO! • Would love to hear from you! • hillemsclass@hotmail.com