Professional Development in Assessment

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Course Guide:

Raising attainment in National Qualifications through Formative Assessment

sqaacademy.org.uk 0131 271 6744

Contents

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Contents................................................................................................................2Welcome...............................................................................................................21 Purpose of the course...................................................................................32 The SQA Academy Approach........................................................................33 The SQA Academy Website..........................................................................44 What will be expected of you.........................................................................55 The Course Topics.........................................................................................76 Support for online activities............................................................................97 Certification....................................................................................................98 Things to do before the workshop..................................................................99 References....................................................................................................9Appendix 1..........................................................................................................10

Welcome

As the education community prepares for the changes coming from a Curriculum for Excellence this course comes at an opportune time as it engages with ideas on assessment which will help promote sound learning while involving the pupils in the process.

For a number of years now work has been going on in primary and early years secondary classes to improve students’ learning by incorporating new methods into classroom practice. These changes have come about through a programme managed by LT Scotland, entitled Assessment is for Learning (AifL). The AifL programme was built on extremely strong research evidence which showed that changing aspects of classroom interaction really improved pupils’ learning. Under the AifL banner, schools throughout Scotland have altered their approaches to questioning, feedback and classroom interaction and in doing so have brought demonstrable benefits to their students. AifL stresses the importance of formative assessment as a key component of effective learning.

While LT Scotland has been promoting AifL, SQA has been busy developing materials to explain to teachers how assessments of qualifications are developed and applied. Much of this has been done through the 2 websites, Understanding Standards and SQA Academy. The former allows teachers the opportunity to see subject specific assessment guidelines and try their hand at applying them, while the latter looks more generically at assessment issues and offers online training. What they both have in

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common is the stress they put on assessments being used to achieve qualifications, in other words summative assessment.

In this course the work being done for AifL and Understanding Standards comes together as we explore how attainment in qualifications can be improved by applying sound learning and assessment techniques. Return to contents

1 Purpose of the course

The purpose of the course is to provide participants with both the theoretical understanding and the necessary skills and techniques to raise the attainment of their students in final qualifications. To this end there are 3 outcomes.

By the end of the course students should be able to:

1. identify the contribution formative assessment can make in raising pupil attainment

2. understand the importance of ensuring that pupils are actively involved in their own learning

3. explore aspects of teaching most likely to stimulate and support pupil involvement of this kind

The course will provide participants with the opportunity to explore, online, a range of materials from theoretical literature to case studies. Online self assessment activities will be available as well as a personal journal and an online forum. These will provide the participants with the opportunity to contribute ideas, engage in discussion and reflect on their individual experiences. The course will also look closely at a number of teaching strategies and participants will be expected to plan and carry out a pilot of the use of a number of these by the conclusion of the course.

Being blended the course will have online activities and face to face workshops.

Online there will be pre workshop readings and activities as well as post workshop directed discussion using the forum, reporting back on the pilot and personal reflection. Return to contents

2 The SQA Academy Approach

The objective of the SQA Academy is to promote a greater understanding of assessment and to encourage best practice in assessment-related activity. Based on a dedicated website, it aims to provide flexible access to a range of training materials and to support a variety of delivery models. It has three main audiences – SQA staff, SQA appointees and the wider group of teaching professionals who deliver and internally assess SQA qualifications.

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The Academy approach is based on courses and the core materials for each course are accessible from the website, www.sqaacademy.org.uk. Some of these courses are designed for solely online delivery and are accessible to any visitor to the site. Such courses tend to be overviews or introductory in nature.

For the more in-depth courses though, the expectation is that they will be used in conjunction with workshop sessions. The idea is that much of the basic imparting of information which takes up a lot of time at workshops can be done online, prior to the workshop itself. That would then free up the valuable face-to-face time for more value-adding activities, which build upon this basic knowledge to deepen understanding and extend skills. This can then be followed up by post-workshop activities to confirm application of the new knowledge and skills in the participant’ own area of work.

Courses are divided into Topics and these will generally include standard online text material but may also include multimedia such as powerpoints, animations, video and audio files. Frequently there will also be links to external resources which, again, may be standard text files, multimedia or other websites. There will elements of assessment in each course too and these will range from straightforward objective tests to reflective journals.

3 The SQA Academy Website

To deliver these courses, we have developed the SQA Academy website within a virtual learning environment (VLE) called “Moodle”. This VLE allows us to offer many features which would just not be practicable using other delivery modes and administers the course from registration to completion.

On registering for a course participants will be given access to SQA Academy website where course details, presentations and tasks will be available for their use. In addition, the Academy site will offer such things as instant group access, wikis and online forums to encourage discussion within the particular course area.

We anticipate that the hybrid model using the SQA Academy VLE together with face-to-face workshops is likely to prove the most popular. In this approach participants will be asked to register with SQA Academy and complete the pre-workshop activities before the face-to-face session. The workshop materials can also be made available on the VLE. Finally, there will be post-workshop activities for the participant complete on SQA Academy.

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4 What will be expected of you

As a tutor

The tutor’s role has 3 distinct parts reflecting the SQA Academy delivery model. Firstly it is to set up the group and get them started using the online course. Next it is to select and deliver activities at a face to face workshop and last but by no

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To view the SQA Academy, go to http://www.sqaacademy.org.uk/

On the opening page you will see some highlighted courses and links to each of the categories of courses.

In order to explore further you will have to create a new account. There are instructions in the help section on the website to help you and they are also available in Appendix 1 of this document. Once you have registered, there are some courses available to you immediately and these are in the Open Courses Category. For other courses, you will be asked for an enrolment key.

Contact the SQA Academy team on academy@sqa.org.uk or 0131 271 6763 to obtain enrolment keys or if you’re having difficulties.

means least it is to launch the forum by selecting and posting topics for discussion.

Tutors have access to parts of the site that participants can’t even see. This will allow you to see guidelines on how to set up, run and get the best of the online section of the course. It will also provide you with access to the Activities library (Topic 9) where a number of good resources for face to face activities are stored; along with guidance on how to deliver them. The key thing for you as a tutor will be that you have had a briefing session with SQA Academy staff to go over your plans for delivery.

As a participant

Your course tutor will invite you to join the online site and ask you to get started on the topics. Initially it will be down to you to do the required reading and perhaps introduce your self on the forum; maybe even upload a photo of your self. Your tutor will give you the times for any work required. In total we would anticipate it taking no more than 2 hours

The face to face workshop will not use computers much at all. Here it is hoped that you will engage in the mainly group activities that are on offer. These have been selected to try to make the time both interesting and valuable. One activity will be to get you to plan the application of these ideas in your own classroom.

But this course does not stop after the workshop. In order to help consolidate the thinking and learning involved up to this point you will be asked to contribute to a number of discussions on the forum. Once again these discussion areas have been selected to try to ensure that there is ample opportunity to get to grips with the critical aspects of the course. One thing certain to be included will be a report on how your planned application worked for you. Another will be an encouragement to reflect on what you have learned and the impact it will have on your work. Indeed you may wish to use this to apply to the GTCS for recognition or as part of the CT submission.Return to contents

Have a look at the topic list below

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5 The Course Topics

There are 8 Topics in this course and these will be explored online, at the face to face workshop and in post workshop online activities

Topic 1 Getting Started

The first topic looks at the Course objectives

1. identify the contribution formative assessment can make in raising pupil attainment

2. understand the importance of ensuring that pupils are actively involved in their own learning

3. explore aspects of teaching most likely to stimulate and support pupil involvement of this kind

When your group goes online to begin the course you are asked to get things started by introducing yourself on the Practitioner Discussion Forum and completing the Self Evaluation. Another feature to look at, at the outset is the Personal Journal. This is there to provide you with a place for reflecting on what you are learning and doing and how this impacts on the your work in the classroom

Topic 2 Using assessment to support Learning - the Big PictureAssessment for certification dominates the later years of secondary education. In this course, you will explore how formative assessment can be used to help students prepare for qualification bearing assessments.

“Inside the Black Box” is an important account of the research into the potential for improved attainment offered by formative assessment, it poses three questions for us to think about:

Is there evidence that improving formative assessment raises standards? Is there evidence that there is room for improvement? Is there evidence about how to improve formative assessment?This topic, the first in the course, will look in detail at the answers to these questions.

Topic 3 Fostering independent learnersIf students have access to clear learning intentions and appropriate success criteria, if they can gather evidence of learning by questioning one another, and if they can give one another feedback for improvement based on that evidence, they will gradually learn how to identify, plan and assess their own learning priorities.

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This topic looks at approaches which help students to take responsibility for their own learning.

Topic 4 Sharing objectives, criteria and standardsIf students understand their learning objectives and the criteria and standards for evaluating their learning, their capacity for self-regulation improves because they can begin to identify for themselves what they need to do to improve.

This topic looks at learning objectives, intentions, purposes or goals and success criteria and standards and how they are important components in providing students with a meaningful framework in which they can take greater responsibility for their own learning.

Topic 5 Using dialogue to review progressThis topic looks at how asking better questions and using them to improve classroom dialogue allow teachers to gather evidence of learning that can be used to provide feedback for improvement. Topic 6 Using feedback to close the gapThis topic looks at how teachers can give good feedback in order to set priorities for learning that help students improve. Topic 7 GTC Professional Recognition

This short online course combined with the workshop event is recognised by the General Teaching Council of Scotland as an excellent CPD opportunity and participation in both components allows participants to claim for GTCS Professional Recognition.

Topic 8 Putting it into PracticeAfter the workshop you will be invited to participate in a forum called 'Putting it into Practice'. Over the subsequent 10 weeks a number of activities for you to complete will be posted on this forum. The key feature of these activities will be contributing your own views and ideas to the forum

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6 Support for online activities

Contact the SQA Academy team on academy@sqa.org.uk or 0131 271 6763 to obtain enrolment keys or if you’re having difficulties.

7 Certification

Participants on this course will be eligible to apply for the appropriate SQA Academy Certificate and GTCS Professional Recognition

8 Things to do before the workshop

9 References

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Appendix 1

Joining a course on the SQA Academy

You may find it useful to print out this document for reference.

There are two steps to joining an SQA Academy course.

First you need an account with the SQA Academy, if you need to set one up, instructions on how to do this are in the section titled ‘Setting up an account’.

Secondly to join most of the courses, you will also have to enter a one time only ‘Enrolment Key’. Instructions on how to do this are in the section titled ‘Enrolling on a course’.

Once you’ve set up an account there is a chance you will forget your password. If you do forget your password the SQA Academy has a built in feature which allows you to reset your password. Instructions on how to do this are in the section titled ‘Forgotten your password?’.

Setting up an account

Figure 1: ‘Create new account’

If you are new to the SQA Academy, and want to create a new account, you will see a link at the bottom of the login box, “Create new Account” as shown in Figure 1.

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Clicking on this link will take you to page where you can start creating a new account with the SQA Academy as shown in Figure 2. The steps to create a new account are as follows.

Figure 2: New Account page

Choose a username and password for yourself. The username should contain only letters and numbers, and have no spaces.We recommend that you use your firstname, lastname and a number together e.g. davidkettle12Microsoft has a guide on how to create a secure password; it is available from the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/create.mspx

Enter your email address (twice), your first and last names, your city and country.Click on the “Create my new account” button.

You should now see the page shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Email sent page

An email will have been sent to the email address you entered when creating your account, it may take a little time before the email arrives.

If you do not receive an email within a day asking you to confirm your account please contact the SQA Academy team (details on page 5).

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You must open this email before you can complete the registration process.

Figure 4: Confirmation email

The email contains a link as shown in Figure 4. Click on this link or copy and paste it into your browser’s address bar. The link will return you to the SQA Academy, where you will be told that your account registration has been confirmed as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Registration confirmation page

Clicking on the “Courses” link on this page, as shown in Figure 6, will take you to the complete list of all the courses on the SQA Academy. The “Home” link at the bottom of the page will also show the full list of courses as shown in Figure 7.

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Figure 6: Courses link Figure 7: Course list

Enrolling on a course

Select the course you wish to join from the Course list or from the front page of the website. If you are new to this course you may be asked for an enrolment key. As shown in Figure 8. Please note: the enrolment key is case sensitive

Figure 8: Enrolment key screen

If you have not received an enrolment key, please contact us by email at academy@sqa.org.uk, or by phone on 0131 271 6744.

Once the enrolment key has been correctly entered, you are fully registered on the course. You will not need to enter the enrolment key again, but you will need to login each time you visit the SQA Academy.

Forgotten your password?

If you forget your password, you can have a new password sent to you by selecting the “Lost password?” link in the login box on the front page as shown in Figure 9.

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Figure 9: Lost password?

This link will take you to a page, as shown in Figure 10, where you can enter either your email address (as used when you registered) or the username you chose for yourself. You do not need to enter both.

Figure 10: Forgotten password

Once you have clicked OK, an email will be sent to you, containing a link, it may take a little time before the email arrives. Clicking this link (or copying and pasting into your browser’s address bar) will return you to SQA Academy, where you will be asked to confirm that you have lost your password, as shown in Figure 11. This step is for security reasons.

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Figure 11: Forgotten password confirmation

Once you have clicked on the continue button here, a second email will be sent to you, with your username and a new password. You can change this password to something more memorable once you have logged back in.

If you have any problems with your username or password you can contact the SQA Academy team by email at academy@sqa.org.uk, or by phone on 0131 271 6744.

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