Introduction
One of my greatest strengths as an Instructional Designer is guiding faculty through the development of authentic assessments, helping them realize assignments that foster the employment of critical thinking skills and simulate meaningful “real world” tasks and duties. Throughout all of my course developments, I have sought to aid faculty in the creation of what pedagogue Grant Wiggins (1993) describes as “tasks [that] are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field” (p. 229). This has been accomplished through simulated consultations, mock-interviews, call-to-action memos, mock-medical charts, and other virtual replicas of real-world professional tasks. In general, I have made an effort to assist faculty in the creation of weekly assignments and activities that demonstrate meaningful application and assess their understanding of course content beyond the recitation of facts and figures. Above all, I have endeavored to develop assessments that reinforces the course content in a meaningful fashion, aiding what Newmann and Wehlage (1993) have termed the “production of discourse, products, and performances that have value or meaning beyond success in school” (p. 8). Below are some notable examples of authentic assessments I have developed as an Instructional Designer:
PLNTPTH 6001: Disease Cycle Lesson
Instructor: Nikki Tate
Course Description: PLNTPTH 6001 (Advanced Plant Pathology) provides students an advanced level of study in plant diseases caused by fungi, bacteria, viruses, nematodes and parasitic higher plants.
Assignment: In this weekly assignment, each student creates and shares a short instructional video on one of the assigned disease cycles, compressing and communicating the basics about their chosen cycle. These lessons should be concise and accessible lectures produced for a specialized audience seeking to learn more about a particular pathogen. Each video should consist of voiceover narration and two images: a completed/comprehensive disease cycle diagram downloaded from ASPnet.org and a simplified version created by the student. These Disease Cycle Lessons should attempt to synthesize and compress a vast wealth of information, giving students the opportunity to instruct their peers in a concise and comprehensive fashion. For this assignment, we also provide students with an a-la carte menu of options for producing these instructional videos, ranging from basic to advanced.
Rationale: The weekly assignment emerged from an ongoing series of discussions with Nikki Tate, who explicated to me the primary role of PLNTPTH 6001 within the program. Tate envisioned this course as a graduate-level introduction to the program with a heavy emphasis on cohort building and student-led learning activities. To further address both priorities, we developed this Disease Cycle Lesson assignment as an opportunity for substantive student-led instruction and peer-to-peer interaction. However, throughout our development, we further tied this activity to particular rhetorical strategies and tech skills students would hypothetically need in their future careers as plant pathologists and extension agents. Each week, students condense and communicate the basic concepts of a particular disease cycle in the fashion of a remote consultation with growers and other pathologists. In other words, students employ the particular strategies needed to impart knowledge and share diagnoses with audiences of varying degrees of expertise. We also allowed students to select their primary modes of expression (ex. Powerpoint, CarmenZoom, CMap, etc.), emphasizing accessibility while also demonstrating the varying ways in which these sorts of remote consultations might be conducted. In theory, we also wanted students to experiment with the technology and determine which might be useful within their future careers. By tying this assignment directly to professional skills, we sought to make what might have been perceived as “weekly busy work” into an authentic assessment that gives students an opportunity to hone and sharpen the particular skillset needed in their professions.
Link: Disease Cycle Lesson – Module 4
HDFS 3620: Lesson Plan Implementation
Instructor: Sean Noe
Course Description: In HDFS 3620 (Intervention and Prevention Practices: Development and Evaluation), students will learn about the importance of prevention efforts in early childhood. The course will focus on Response to Intervention (RTI) as a framework for understanding how to effectively approach prevention and intervention efforts in a preschool or elementary school setting. Students will learn about the development, integration, and evaluation of intervention and prevention practices applied to teaching important skills that improve functional outcomes in everyday contexts. Given areas of interest, students will be asked to apply empirically supported instructional design and assessment features to a problem area.
Assignment: In this assignment, students will review five introductory videos from real-life children at the Columbus Boys & Girls Club. Each video showcases a different “student” who tells the viewer more about their age, grade, personal aptitudes, and some of their interests. From there, each student will develop, share, and submit an individualized instructional activity for one of the students, using strategies covered during the semester (curriculum-based assessment, lesson planning, differentiation, language/literacy, etc.). This assignment comes in multiple phases, with students peer review and revision components.
Rationale: Sean Noe and I developed this assignment—which students complete in two chunks near the end of the semester—to compensate for a critical gap that emerged during our development period. In the F2F iteration of this course, Noe would provide his students a solid block of one-on-one time with children from the Boys & Girls Club. During these class sessions, students would interact extensively with one of the children, gain a firm understanding of their instructional needs and interests, and design an individualized lesson plan targeting that particular learner. This cumulative assignment tasked students with employing some of the strategies covered during the semester (curriculum-based assessment, lesson plan, differentiation, language/literacy), essentially giving them hands-on practice developing the sort learning materials that would constitute their professional lives.
To make this assignment work within the confines of an online course, Noe and I worked with Media Services to shoot a series of “introductory videos” from children of varying ages at the Boys and Girls Club. Each video showcases a different learner, giving them a space to divulge their favorite subjects, personal interests, and biggest struggles in school. From there, the student would assess and determine the specific instructional needs of a particular student, using what they have gleaned to produce an individualized lesson plan. Additionally, students draft a reflection activity that clarifies the motives behind the creation for this particular lesson. In the second half of the assignment, students practice differentiation by scaling the lesson plan up and down based on the learner’s initial response. In the end, Noe and I developed this assignment to simulate for students the push-and-pull negotiation between instructor and students, giving them a virtualized experience that mimics the sort of hands-on development needed for creating effective lesson plans.
Link: Implementation and Differentiation
Reference List
- Newmann, F. M. & Wehlage, G. G. (1993). Five standards of authentic instruction. Educational Leadership, 50, 8-12.
- Wiggins, G. P. (1993). Assessing student performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.