Timely feedback to support learning or measurement of progress. Why are we assessing learning?

Our journey so far and where we want to go…

Sometimes you need a crisis to understand that you have to change track.  COVID19 has not only challenged the way we learn, but also the way we assess.

In response to the COVID 19 crisis we started, as ETF,  with final and end of the year assessments as these are a common issue for all countries under the COVID situation. Countries were faced with an unprecedented situation for which they had to find solutions. VET was particularly affected as it requires demonstration of competence, and that is not always possible in the current situation. Moreover, practice was interrupted and by default training became rather theoretical.

As ETF we wanted to share information and show to countries how colleagues dealt with it. Many countries tried to maintain or postpone assessments in order not to change the approach. But we see also some opening up to alternative arrangements, including assessment online.

For those who have followed our first webinar you will have heard of the experiment about the online research assignments for VET students in Egypt’s VET system. The automobile sector in France took a calculated risk to skip the final assessment for some learners that had already demonstrated the majority of competences. In Finland every module is assessed in an authentic context and they have no final assessment anyway,. Both France and Finland have more flexible timetables for certification. In Kazakhstan assessment is moved online, by using randomly generated online tests and asks students to defend their diploma works in focused online sessions. Finally , and the reflections made by Horacy Debowski from the National Examination Committee in Poland raised a question whether we should not use more evidence collected during the learning process itself to demonstrate that someone was is competent than only to wait until the final exam. The webinar is recorded so you can still listen back.

We now see that the situation in Europe and most partner countries is gradually improving and countries try to return back to normal, whatever that may mean.

Situations that limit our possibilities such as the COVID19 crisis, often force us to be more creative problem solvers. We have therefore started to look at assessment in different ways, trying to bring together the two opposing schools of thought on the importance of assessment for learning and the need to be able to make a good assessment of learning, to demonstrate competence.

• The first school emphasizes that assessment is an integrated part of learning and can be used to give feedback to learners and help them to learn more efficiently. Learning is an individual process and feedback can be very helpful for individual learners to progress and shape and define the further learning, enabling them as well to change their focus. Summative assessment comes too late for feedback.
• The second school emphasizes the importance of demonstrating competence. Learners are competent if they can apply their knowledge, skills, competences and attitudes to address real situations in authentic settings. The learning process is individual and does not only follow the curriculum so the assessment should be based on the expected learning outcomes rather than the curriculum.

It is however in these extreme situations that you can make a click and see the exceptional circumstances as an opportunity to rethink how we deal with assessment.

We will follow up with two larger webinars on formative and on summative assessment, in which we will look back to this year’s unique experience. We are planning as well some focused online sessions where we will look how we could evaluate our approaches to assessment and innovate them. This work is becoming part of ETF’s Creating New Learning project.

In the meantime, we try to stimulate a discussion on Open Space through blogs.

Many partner countries are working on strengthening their summative assessment in making sure it can really provide proof of competence. They want to strengthen confidence in assessment and want to make sure it is not only in the hands of the educators.

So, our question to you is can you combine these approaches?  Can you e.g. use assessment for learning to make summative decisions? Can partner countries leapfrog this development and build new approaches to assessment that could support both better feedback for learning and measurement of progress in lifelong learning?

We would like to explore this with you in the coming months and look forward to hearing from you,

Please share us your views on what you think is important in assessment and how we can build assessment systems for lifelong learning.