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52 stories
Week 31: Top End innovation
ACER’s Online Monitoring and Assessing Early Learning project is an innovative way of engaging students in challenging learning opportunities appropriate to their readiness and needs.
Developed by Research Fellows Danielle Anzai, Sandra Knowles and colleagues in ACER’s Assessment and Reporting research program and directed by Annie Brown, the project for the Northern Territory Department of Education and Training (DET) will assess Year 1 students’ literacy and numeracy from 2013.
‘Other online assessments for early years students do exist,’ Danielle notes, ‘but these generally involve one-to-one administration by teachers. We’re pioneering an approach where early years students navigate the assessment site, tackle the questions and input the data by themselves.’
There are many benefits of the online model, Danielle says. ‘Research shows that children, including those from migrant and Indigenous backgrounds, engage strongly with computers. There’s also less performance pressure than the teacher-student interview can create and students are able to go back and freely change their answers by clicking the “undo” button. We also have the capacity to generate rich data by following the students' computer behaviour and creating additional diagnostic modules to find out more about their understanding.
‘The key,’ Danielle explains, ‘is to make the most of the computer-based features and not have the navigation itself become too much of a task for students. We’ve mapped the assessment against the new Australian Curriculum, but if a question can’t be asked in a manageable way onscreen using a click or drag-and-drop approach, we’re not asking it.
‘The DET has been very clear that the assessment should feel local and familiar, and reflect the students’ context. We’ve secured Indigenous voice actors to read the stories for the multiple-choice comprehension section, and Julie Nihill – from Blue Heelers and now a teacher at Collingwood College in Melbourne – is voicing all the audio. Every option, instruction and question is available as an audio and text option.’
Danielle and Sandra, with colleagues Nicola Andrews, Naomi Sermon and Ray Philpot, developed and piloted the assessment in schools in remote and urban schools in the NT in May. ‘We’re undertaking a larger trial at the end of 2012, and will be looking at how the multiple-choice section works with this age group. We’re also delivering a practice program so that teachers can troubleshoot the administration and students can become comfortable with the navigation.’
Danielle and her Assessment and Reporting colleagues’ work, alongside ACER Institute graduate programs on literacy and numeracy, and the work of ACER Chief Executive Geoff Masters using the Teaching and Learning School Improvement Framework, is helping to support students, teachers and school leaders across the NT.
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Week 52: State of the art psychometric and statistical analysis
Week 51: Assessing civics and citizenship
Week 50: International research into teaching and learning
GOAL 1
Learners and their needs
every learner engaged in challenging learning opportunities appropriate to their readiness and needs
GOAL 2
The Learning Profession
every learning professional highly skilled, knowledgeable and engaged in excellent practice
GOAL 3
Places of learning
every learning community well resourced and passionately committed to improving outcomes for all learners
GOAL 4
A Learning Society
a society in which every learner experiences success and has an opportunity to achieve their potential
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