Friday, October 2, 2015

Feed Forward and Authentic Assessment

            

            As an educator, assessing teaching strategies and evaluating student learning is an imperative process. There are numerous assessment techniques that can be utilized as either formative or summative evaluation. In my courses, I will use a variety of evaluation strategies so students are able to exhibit their knowledge, skills, and attitudes in many ways. These strategies can take the form of traditional or authentic assessments. In my role as a nurse educator, I will use a combination of these two assessments. By using tests and exams as part of the traditional assessments, I will help students prepare to take the NCLEX examination. However, there needs to be other means of assessing learning and this is where authentic assessment strategies come into play. Authentic assessment assesses student learning in the context of real-world nursing application and the ability to make connections between classroom and clinical experiences. Not only will these assessment strategies serve as another way to prepare students for the NCLEX, but they will also prepare them for their role as a professional nurse. Using authentic assessment in my classroom will give me the ability to measure the student’s retention of knowledge but also their ability to critically think and make clinically sound decisions.

            Giving and receiving feedback is another essential aspect in the teaching process. In my role as a nurse educator, I will strive to provide continuous feedback that is constructive, timely, and clear. There are many uses for feedback but I strongly believe that one of the main purposes is for improvement. Incorporating formative assessment throughout the course will allow for areas to be identified where students can improve and better themselves. For this reason, feedback must be given in a way that it is useful. In addition to formative assessment being used for student improvement, it is also has a purpose in giving me, as the educator, ideas on how to improve the course. In other words, my course will also integrate feed forward for both students and myself. This type of response has a focus on the future rather than dwelling on the past. It provides suggestions to the student or educator on how they can modify their learning or teaching. Summative evaluation will also be used as a way to identify if students have met the course outcomes or achieved competency in certain areas. Overall, I hope to be an educator that uses multiple methods of evaluating student learning, including authentic assessment, provides feedback that is useful and beneficial to students, and utilizes feedback as a means of course improvement.

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