Archive for the ‘News’ Category

What would it take to position a non-profit organization’s contributions to the field of education as a viable offering to and business opportunity in the for-profit sector?

Are they ready for the programmatic and technology challenges ahead?

What do they need to know to focus their resources and make best use of their existing investments?

A group of MBA students at the University at Albany are going to tackle these questions this semester in Dr. Eliot Rich’s course, Systems Analysis and Design. ACASE is collaborating with Dr. Rich and his students in a project called the Assessment Information System (AIS) Discovery project as the students take on a real-life case study: the opportunities and challenges of bringing ACASE’s Assessment Information System (AIS) into the 21^st century and positioning it as part of a viable business opportunity.  The goal of the project is to engage the students in an authentic learning experience with a real-life organization, in which they play the role of business analyst. During the course of this project, students will meet with and interview a variety of internal and external stakeholders at the organization. From this information they will come to understand the business problem and types of needs an information system may fulfill.  The students will specify requirements and technical considerations for updating the AIS so that it will be sustainable and ready for emerging markets and technologies.

ACASE is excited to embark on this collaboration with Dr. Rich and his students, bringing an authentic learning experience that we feel will add value to the students’ professional development, as well bring fresh, new perspective to our organization’s opportunities and challenges for the future.

Reveal the essence of any educational activity by asking three fundamental questions:

What are the learning goals?
How well are the learning goals being attained?
What are the best ways to help learners attain the learning goals?

ACASE is delighted to advise the Saratoga Springs High School’s Practicum in Collaborative Media, an innovative project in public education. Read more about the project here.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) initiative is an inspired vision and strategic plan for how to take the best qualities of science and make them a living part of educational programs.  But, how will we know if this vision is being realized?  An information base is needed that provides how well students are attaining the standards, and it must take a form that will be useful to teachers in planning and evaluating their instruction. Without such a practical  information base The Next Generation Science Standards may take the path of using high-stakes, norm-referenced testing to evaluate instruction, a path that has led to the failure of  reform initiatives for more than a half a century. ACASE Directors Monica De Tuya and Paul Zachos tackle this challenge and offer practical solutions in their upcoming workshop — Educational Information is About to Change. The workshop demonstrates the necessity for working consciously with the essential elements of the educational process and provides the new basis for educational information needed to help the NGSS become a successful and sustainable educational initiative.  These essential elements then become the building blocks for enlivening a teacher’s daily efforts to engage students and maximize their learning.  Join us on Sunday November 4^th in Rochester NY, at the 123^rd Annual Science Teachers Association of New York State Conference,  for the demonstration of a new foundation for educational thinking and action, and for stimulating conversation on the challenges and opportunities associated with assessment of NGSS.

 

Can ‘reliability’ be used in a practical and useful way in the classroom? We say yes! ACASE associates Panpan Yang, Paul Zachos, and Monica De Tuya will be presenting their research poster at the at the 49th Annual Northeastern Educational Research Association Conference October 17-19, 2018 in Trumbull, CT. The research poster presents and evaluates a new approach to reliability that will allow teachers to obtain quality assessment information that is both practical and useful for supporting daily instructional practice. The research was conducted using our Cubes & Liquids assessment activity.

Cubes and Liquids (C&L) is an educational activity developed by ACASE to assess six capabilities critical to success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Some of these capabilities have since been shown to be of value in the study of literature and social studies as well. Cubes and Liquids was inspired by the work of master teacher Cindy Sargent and the groundbreaking assessment techniques developed by Barbel Inhelder and Jean Piaget. It grew out of our own research that demonstrated how high school students can discover fundamental scientific concepts through their own investigations of natural phenomena in surprisingly short periods of time. For years we have used C&L as a way to demonstrate the value of practical learning goals in planning, evaluating and improving teaching. More recently we have been using it as a basis for expanding educational science by developing methods of validity and reliability that are directly relevant to teaching practice.  This research will result in an updated and greatly improved version of Cubes and Liquids. See our newest intern Hunter Johns and ACASE Director Paul Zachos experiencing Cubes & Liquids as students would for the first time.

On Thursday July 12^th ACASE Directors Monica De Tuya and Paul Zachos presented their talk Educational Information is About to Change at the annual DATAG Summer Conference in Saratoga Springs, NY. New York State’s educational data analysts became among the first to receive news of the remarkable transformation in educational information that will eventually replace high-stakes norm-referenced testing and grading. The presentation was unique in that it was designed to introduce the DATAG community to the full set of 12 Fundamental Learning Objectives that underlie competence in educational assessment and evaluation. View the framework for this presentation here and the 12 fundamental learning objectives for assessment and evaluation here.

Paul Zachos & Monica De Tuya will be presenting at the DATAG 2018 Conference Thursday July 12^th. Read all about their talk below!

The educational measurement community is working to develop theory and methods for assessment and evaluation that will be more relevant to classroom teaching. Recent breakthroughs have led to the identification of a critical unit of educational data that can accomplish this purpose — the practical learning outcome (PLO). The PLO is a natural unit of thinking and action for standards-based education. It supports the realization
 of standards at the performance indicator level, the critical level of specificity for planning, evaluating and refining instruction. The PLO permits meaningful and efficient aggregation of educational data from individual students, through school and school district, to state and national levels. It also provides a basis for replacing the traditional psychometric interpretations of validity and reliability with purely educational counterparts. The session opens with a report on a STEM based performance assessment that shows how conventional testing and grading differ from educational assessment and evaluation. It concludes with a demonstration of an information technology that provides teachers with precisely the information needed to support practical every day decision-making.

What are the most important attainments for my students?

How do I know if my students are learning?

How can I find and share evidence of their learning?

And, most critically, how do I find the time to do all this?

EA&E Online is a professional development opportunity for lecturers, teaching assistants and professors who will be actively teaching in the Fall of 2018.  Participation in EA&E provides clear and powerful answers to the questions presented above. Attending these workshops will allow educators to collaborate, build community, and discover how educational assessment and evaluation can be a positiveforce to improve teaching and learning in higher education. This will be accomplished by creating, implementing and refining curriculum, assessments, and instruction in the participants chosen domain of learning.

Educators will leave EA&E Online equipped with practical knowledge, skills, and dispositions and the actual experience of conducting educational assessment and evaluation with feedback and support from peers. They will learn the requirements of efficient teaching; witness the power of valid, reliable, and engagingeducational assessments; and gain confidence using efficient ways to report student learning to all interested stakeholders. The community developed during this course will provide ongoing support and inspiration through multiple virtual and in-person venues as we work together using educational assessment and evaluation to transform educational practice.

For more information and instructions for applying click here.

What are the most critical attainments for my students?

How do I find out what is actually being learned?

How can I find and share evidence of attainment?

And, most critically —How do I find the time to do all this?

EA&E Online is a professional development opportunity for teachers, librarians, principals, and information specialists who will be actively teaching in the Fall of 2018.  Participants in EA&E develop clear and powerful answers to the questions presented above. Educators will leave EA&E Online equipped with practical knowledge, skills, and dispositions developed through the actual experience of conducting educational assessment and evaluation with feedback and support from peers. They will learn the requirements of efficient teaching; witness the power of valid, reliable, and engagingeducational assessments; and gain confidence in using efficient ways to report student learning to all interested stakeholders. This will be accomplished by creating, carrying out and refining curriculum, assessments, and instruction in the participant’s chosen domain of learning. Attending these workshops gives educators an opportunity to collaborate, build community, and discover how educational assessment and evaluation can be a positiveforce to improve teaching and learning. The community developed during this course will provide ongoing support and inspiration through multiple virtual and in-person venues as we work together using educational assessment and evaluation to transform educational practice.

For more information and instructions for applying click here.

What skills do my trainees most need? How do I know when they have been attained?  How can I demonstrate the added value of training outcomes to productivity? How can I find and share evidence of their learning? And, most critically, how do I find the time to do all this?

EA&E Online is a professional development opportunity for trainers as well as educators in conventional and non-traditional learning environments.  Participants in EA&E develop clear and powerful answers to these questions. Attending these workshops will allow trainers to collaborate, build community, and discover how educational assessment and evaluation can be a positive force to improve training and organizational outcomes. This will be accomplished by creating, implementing and refining training goals, assessments, and training activities.

Trainers in any industry will leave EA&E Online equipped with practical knowledge, skills, and dispositions and the actual experience of conducting educational assessment and evaluation with the support of and feedback from peers. They will learn the requirements of efficient training; witness the power of valid, reliable, and engagingeducational assessments; and gain confidence using efficient ways to report learning to all interested stakeholders. The community developed during this course will provide ongoing support and inspiration through multiple virtual and in-person venues as we work together using educational assessment and evaluation to transform training.

For more information and instructions for applying click here.