open assessments and oers as enablers in competency-based education
DESCRIPTION
Call for Demos for the X International UOC UNESCO Chair Seminar Title: Open Assessments and OERs as Enablers in Competency-Based Education Tom Caswell, Helix Education Brandon Muramatsu, MIT It has been said that if you are measuring seat time rather than competency then you are measuring the wrong end of the student. Competency-based education has received a great deal of attention as a disruptive innovation that promises to raise quality and lower the cost of higher education. EDUCAUSE defines competency-based education (CBE) as awarding academic credit based on mastery of clearly defined competencies. In traditional higher education time is fixed and learning varies, which is why students receive grades at the end of a quarter or semester. Contrast this with competency-based education, where learning is fixed and time varies for each student. But if time varies then how do students know when they are done? Assessments play a central role in CBE because student performance must be measured against set standards. While there are vast repositories of OERs, relatively few come with assessments to validate knowledge or check for understanding. In this demo we will show the Open Embedded Assessment (OEA) tool developed by MIT and Open Tapestry. Open Assessment complements existing OER efforts with tools to allow instructors to embed assessments in any OER, thereby providing students with a richer learning experience. Faculty can also create shared collections of assessment items with other faculty. We will demonstrate the current state of Open Embedded Assessments as both a formative and a summative tool. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges of a CBE implementation. As more institutions explore competency-based education the need for an open infrastructure will grow. Helix Education is developing CBE courses using OERs to show what is possible within the Helix platform. Open Embeddable Assessments allow OERs to be leveraged into richer learning environments. Enhanced with Open Embeddable Assessments, these environments can provide valuable information back to students, faculty, and instructional designers. This data can expose gaps and deficiencies in the course -- areas that should be strengthened. And with open content the opportunity for data-driven improvement can be fully realized because the OERs can be legally modified. Together, Open Embeddable Assessments and OERs create a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement that can serve competency-based education well.TRANSCRIPT
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Open Assessments and OERs
as Enablers in Competency-
Based Education
Demo for the X International UNESCO Chair Seminar
Tom Caswell, [email protected]
@tom4cam
Brandon Muramatsu, [email protected]
@bmuramatsu
Unless otherwise specified this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Safe is risky.
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Measuring education by learning, not time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJdE7u1ZN60#t=598
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What is Competency-Based Education?
Competency-based education (CBE)
awards academic credit based on mastery
of clearly defined competencies.
EDUCAUSE “7 Things you should know about competency-based education”
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1. Emphasizes mastery and de-emphasizes time
2. Assessments/projects play a central role
3. Individualized support for learners
4. More flexibility and responsibility for learners
• Apply prior knowledge and experience
• Learning can be self-paced
Common Features of CBE
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Who Is Doing It?
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Learning is the new constant
Time varies.
Every student can succeed!
PA
SS
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Types of OER Content
• Videos
• Lectures
• Textbooks
• Webpages
• Assessments
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Focus: Formative Assessment
• Check understanding / mastery of
concepts directly in course materials
• Primarily for formative (self-check,
understanding) not summative (exams or
formal assignments)
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The Potential
• Do for assessments what’s been done for
content (courses, lectures, videos)
• Embed anywhere
• Share• Don’t reinvent the wheel for every course
• Evaluate, record and track responses• Scale –> More use of items/assessments for validity
• May lead to evidence of impact?
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openassessments.org
11
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What is OpenAssessments.org?
• Embed an assessment in any web content
• Focus on formative assessments
• Start with limited question types
• Multiple-choice/single answer
• Numerical answer
• Short answer
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How do you use it?
• Create a question in a standardized format
• Typically using IMS Question & Test Interoperability
spec
• Likely created in your learning management system
• Put the question on a public web server
• Copy and paste the URL to the question file
• That’s it!
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But can we make it reusable?
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Embedded in MIT OpenCourseWare
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How it works
We pass a URL for the raw OLX code to the open assessments web application:
http://www.openassessments.com/assessments/load?utf8=✓src_url=http://…/courses/mathematics/18-05-introduction-to-probability-and-statistics-spring-2014/sequential/ps1.xml
And then to embed it in MIT OCW, we use an iframe:
<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px;" src="http://www.openassessments.com/assessments/load?utf8=✓&style=ocw&src_url=http://…/courses/mathematics/18-05-introduction-to-probability-and-statistics-spring-2014/sequential/ps1.xml">
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Analytics (Mockup)
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Related and Future Work
• Increasing use
• Open Item Banks
• Use in Lumen Learning-developed OER course
• Extending to additional MIT OCW courses
• Extending functionality
• Additional question types, especially parameterized/interactive
ones
• How will you use it? openassessments.org
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Thank you for listening.
Tom Caswell, [email protected]
@tom4cam
Brandon Muramatsu, [email protected]
@bmuramatsu