MALAT, Royal Roads University<\/span><\/p>\n LRNT 524 \u2013 Innovation, Design, and Learning Environments<\/span><\/p>\n Leeann Waddington & Lisa Gedak<\/span><\/p>\n January 2, 2022<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf I had an hour to solve a problem, I\u2019d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions<\/span><\/i>.\u201d \u2013 Albert Einstein<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Context<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic forced many higher education institutions to pivot face-to-face instruction online. While education is constantly evolving and changing, this shift has created new professional challenges for educators and intensified the need to adapt how they teach and assess to best support student learning in digital environments.<\/span><\/p>\n Prior Assumptions\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Before beginning the <\/span>five-phase Design Thinking process (<\/span>Doorley et al., 2018<\/span>)<\/span>, our team identified theories from adult education and online learning to provide the framework for our design challenge. We wanted to determine how the instructor intends learners to interact with the content, the instructor, and the other students. Employing Knowles’ (1984) four principles of andragogy, the team assumed:<\/span><\/p>\n Next, we established instructional goals and objectives after considering the main principles of instruction to improve student learning (Bates, 2015a). Employing Knowles\u2019 (1984) adult learning theory of andragogy, to increase the effectiveness of online learning, we agreed instructors would need to ask students to complete real-world tasks and offer assessments that centre around the learning outcomes of an activity (Kearsley, 2010 as cited in Branco, 2018).<\/span><\/p>\n The Design Process<\/b><\/p>\n Our team infused Design Thinking with the ADDIE model (Bates, 2015a) and rapid, responsive elements of the Agile approach (Svihla, 2017; Thurston, 2014) throughout this design challenge to improve our problem-solving and decision-making capabilities (Bates, 2015a). <\/span>We initially saw the design challenge as straightforward. For instructors to evaluate students more appropriately online, the instructors assessment practices needed to change. However, the opportunity turned out to be much more significant. By the end of the process, what we ultimately produced was a wholly redesigned online assessment tool for instructors to use, which offers more authentic, hands-on learning experiences for students in higher education courses. This dramatic reframing of the opportunity emerged from our team’s human-centred, empathetic approach to the process. We discovered that merely fixing online assessments would not solve the problem, we needed to change the philosophy behind them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Problem Statement<\/b><\/p>\n Working as partners, our design team (Katia and Ashley) comprising secondary and post-secondary educators, teaching in production for television and film, and English as a Second Language (ESL), followed the experiences of instructors and students to design a solution to address this complex challenge by dedicating our efforts to improve online assessment strategies. Using Gabriella, a 25-year-old graduate student, and Ashoka, a 46-year-old college instructor, as extensions of ourselves as we worked through the five-phases (<\/span>Doorley et al., 2018<\/span>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Gabriella and Ashoka are anxious because COVID-19 and the constant threats of pandemic-related hardships have made the sudden transition to teaching and learning online challenging. Specifically, Gabriella worries that her skills and abilities have not been appropriately evaluated and graded in the spring and fall semesters of 2021, but hopes the winter 2022 term will bring a better learning and assessment experience. Ashoka is looking to make teaching and learning online a more human-centred experience with assessments that meaningfully connect with her students. From this we arrived at our problem statement: <\/span>Instructors, like Ashoka, need an authentic way to support student agency around online assessments because it will help equip students, like Gabriella, with the critical skills they need to be successful, independent, life-long learners.\u00a0 <\/b>Next, our team stepped in to find a solution that satisfies the needs of both stakeholders.<\/span><\/p>\n The Solution<\/b><\/p>\n Looking at our problem statement we employed the authentic assessment model as our design solution.\u00a0 <\/span>Together we reviewed the ethnographic research and developed insights and design criteria to generate ideas and appraise the overall purpose, process, and use of an authentic assessment (see Figure 1; Weleschuk et al., 2019).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Figure 1.<\/b> Non-functional prototype sketch\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n A<\/span>uthentic assessment<\/span> is based on students\u2019 abilities to perform meaningful tasks which they may confront in the real-world, and demonstrate their mastery through the production of digital artefacts or participation in project-based learning tasks (<\/span>DePaul Center of Teaching and Learning, n.d.<\/span>). In a nutshell, it is a type of assessment that determines students\u2019 learning in a way that goes beyond traditional tests which <\/span>tend to assess static, over-simplified elements of activities<\/span> (Wiggins, 1990). <\/span>Table 1 summarizes the advantages of <\/span>authentic assessment over traditional assessment.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Table 1.<\/b> Authentic assessment versus traditional assessment<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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