In what ways do we work differently now, when it comes to differentiation, organization and carrying out learning and assessment activities?
Through working with the project, we have been involving students in discussing and defining assessment criteria more systematically than before. For example, one example of an assessment criteria was given to the students by the teacher (“use the APA citation and referencing style”), and they were to discuss and suggest other relevant assessment criteria for the specific assignment given. The discussions and suggestions of assessment criteria were based on the task given and the relevant competence aims in the course plan (“emneplan”).
The project led to students systematically providing and working with feedback by ensuring that we set aside time for planning. We had to be more aware than before when it comes to how the feedback is provided, how it is going to be worked on, how the assessment criteria are developed etc. We spent more time on peer assessment, where students provided feedback to peers on written texts in class. This was done as part of the assignment requirements. Furthermore, compared to before, we had to make sure that we talked about the writing process with the students. They had lectures on formative assessment and formative feedback, and they were made more aware of what it means to write through drafting, editing and revising.
Throughout the semester, the students wrote systematic reflection notes, where we gave them six questions regarding reflections on their writing, the feedback received, the follow-up of feedback and the use of OneNote to work with formative assessment. The reflection notes were written both in and out of class.
In general, the project has led to awareness raising about formative assessment, contributing to back-engineering the English courses. In addition to planning we usually do, like planning forward in time, we needed to take into consideration the whole process from the beginning of assessment work, assessment criteria, development work, reporting to NUV, research project, conferences, assignments, feedback, follow-up of feedback, reflection notes – until the product, being the student presentation portfolios.