Assessing learners´ skills and competences

Re-assessment during the training course or unit

In this module part, you will learn about why to reuse assessment during a FIL training course from participants’ and teachers’ point of view and three assessment tools commonly used for re-assessment.

Re-assessment strategies provide mostly formative assessment methods and appear in a variety of formats, being part of the instructional process. When incorporated into classroom practice, it provides information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening. In this sense, it informs both participants and teachers about participants´ learning progress and understanding of training contents at a point when timely adjustments can be made. Teachers should know results to plan next steps and appraise the learning progress of participants.

Re-assessing knowledge, skills and competences regularly during training activities can help:

• Participants observe their learning progress as well as their improvement made in on-going training,
• Participants become/ stay motivated and be supported to keep on focusing on the learning contents,
• Teachers see the satisfaction of participants with different learning offers set up at the beginning of the course and, perhaps, the need to adjust them; and help appraise any learning progress.

Re-assessment can be conducted online or in group- resp. face-to-face settings, depending on the teaching focus of the unit. It can be done on a regular basis or spontaneously, e.g. at the end of each training week, at the end of each training unit within the course or after a new training input when re-assessment seems to be important.

Useful questions for a short re-assessment:

• What (was the learning goal of today/this week/this unit and what) did you learn?
• What was the most useful aspect you learnt today/this week/within this unit?
• Which questions remain in your mind after today/this week/this unit?
• Which are typical situations you can apply lessons learnt in your daily life?
• Etc.

These questions can be answered in group or individually, in face-to-face setting or online, in written on work sheets or orally.

Answers will give participants the opportunity to reflect upon their respective learning progress as well as on what is still not so clear to them. It gives them an opportunity to clarify and follow-up further learning.

For teachers, answers will be useful to check understanding of learning contents and perhaps adapt the learning focus.

Another good practice for re- assessment is to ask participants at the end of a training sequence or at the beginning of the next one to summarise (orally or in writing) what they have learnt, how they can transform this knowledge into real life and if they need to repeat/deepen some of the topics.

Pros

Partly “informal” assessments like these don´t take much time but may have a good impact on reflecting about training goals, contents and outcomes. They can be managed without major preparation and help change the mood into a more positive and reflective one e.g.

Cons

Participants need to understand the questions first to be able to refer to them. Hence, adapting the language and terminology to the target audience is also a key success factor for any re-assessment at short notice.

Recommended example/ further reading:

Example survey tools with quick and easy access online are available online, also as Mobile Apps, or could be embedded in any smart learning system. For example: https://www.surveymonkey.com/, https://www.polleverywhere.com

Source: https://www.polleverywhere.com