Developing Formative Assessments Discussion
Formative assessments are done as the course progresses and assess learners’ understanding of content and how it has contributed to the overall learning and course objectives achievement. Formative assessments help instructors understand their students and determine areas for improvement for future planning and rectification. This essay evaluates how a formative assessment builds on student learning, and course objectives outline an assessment theory and principles of assessment, and out barriers to an online assessment that the chosen assessment design addresses. Developing Formative Assessments Discussion
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- Assessment Elements
B1. Assessment Items Alignment with at least one COs and SLOs
The first assessment item is; Explain what disaster preparedness is. This prompt aligns with the course objective “By the end of the course, the learner should be able to differentiate the stages of disaster management and their activities.” Mayer (2019) argues that beginning an online learning or online assessment by activating schema and provoking prior knowledge is significant. The assessment item will help differentiate the disaster planning stage from other stages of disaster management and will help the learner. It will also help achieve other elements because disaster preparation will facilitate understanding the activities, including nursing roles and communications. Disaster preparedness is the first stage in disaster management. Developing Formative Assessments Discussion
The second item is: Analyze the activities and your role as a nurse in the disaster preparation stage of disaster management. This prompt aligns with the course objective “By the end of the course, the learner should be able to differentiate the stages of disaster management and their activities.” This activity helps analyze the activities in the preparation stage of disaster management. By doing so, the learner will gain knowledge and skills that will help them differentiate all the stages through specific activities in each stage by the end of the course, aligning it with the course objectives. The third item is: Justify the presence and role of specific stakeholders in the disaster management team. This prompt aligns with the course objective “By the end of the course, the learner should be able to justify the stakeholders in disaster management and their involvement significance.” This item answers questions such as who are the disaster preparedness team members? What are their roles and their significance? Developing Formative Assessments Discussion
Furthermore, What are the consequences of their absence from the team? This assessment item will help learners assess the stage of disaster management and the various activities outline able to stakeholders, and the roles of each. The learner will explain why a stakeholder must be present, the consequences of their absence, and each of the stakeholders’ roles in preparing for disaster to help build upon the knowledge required to justify and explains the roles of various stakeholders in the disaster management process. The activity narrows down the objective to only one stage, and repetition of the activity in other stages will then help create knowledge and skills in the nurses in determining the appropriate stakeholders and their specific roles in the disaster management process.
The fourth is: Explain your local community’s disaster preparedness needs. This prompt aligns with the student learning outcome “At the end of the course, the learner will sketch a disaster preparedness plan for their community’s disaster preparedness.” This item requires applying knowledge to assess their communities and explain their needs. The student will examine their community and the disaster preparedness prerequisites to explain their community members’ needs in disaster preparation. Disaster preparedness relies upon a thorough community assessment to determine needs and strategies to achieve them (Pandey, 2019). Pandey (2019) notes that communities have varied needs and are affected differently by disasters, hence the need to assess their specific needs to help plan their management. Thus, this learning activity builds on the nurses’ knowledge in assessing community needs which will be necessary for sketching a disaster preparedness plan at the end of the course.
The last item is: Describe the various communication strategies a nurse can utilize in disaster management to communicate and collaborate with other stakeholders. This item aligns with the student learning outcome “At the end of the course, the learner will explain collaboration and coordination strategies for effective disaster management.” The vital question is how nurses and other team members communicate. Nurses must work in teams and therefore have the knowledge and skills to collaborate with other team members at all stages of disaster management. Collaboration entails working together as a team to achieve the desired objectives. Activities in disaster preparation entail determining population needs, such as vulnerable populations in the communities, and the resources each member of the relief team possesses that can be used to ensure effective disaster management (Ryan et al., 2020)Developing Formative Assessments Discussion. This state is crucial because any misappropriation of resources or collaboration failure at this stage affects all other stages of disaster management.
According to Rice and Jahn (2020), gathering resources such as medicines, a response plan, ambulances, and access to a community are vital to disaster planning and management; utilizing lessons learned from past experiences helps communities prepare for disasters. Communication is essential to disaster preparation, and deciding on communication methods and channels is vital to collaboration between nurses and other team members. Lestari et al. (2020) note that communication is essential in disaster management, and all disaster response team members should undergo effective training to ensure they collaborate and communicate with others effectively. Communication breakdown is a major barrier to effective disaster management. One of the summative objectives is that the learners will describe the various collaboration and coordination strategies for effective disaster management. By understanding and outlining the various communication strategies to facilitate collaboration in this formative assessment, the learner will gain the knowledge and competencies required for effective collaboration in disaster preparedness because communication is vital.
The items in this activity build upon nurses’ understanding of the disaster preparation stage of disaster management. The items build upon the knowledge learned from the previous item. They begin by activating knowledge in disaster preparation. It goes further to discuss activities in this stage and nurses’ roles. It also justifies the stakeholders in this stage and then determines communication strategies that will enhance collaboration among the team members identified. These items will help assess the student’s understanding of this stage and determine areas that need improvement. Reflecting on learned knowledge and personal understanding of the topics will also motivate the students through the course.
B2 Feedback Assessment
Some assessment designs make it difficult to provide immediate feedback. Calimeris and Kosack (2020) note that immediate feedback gives a rating of a student’s knowledge and understanding of a concept within ten seconds of completing a task, common in online multiple-choice questions. Unlike tests which can give immediate feedback with the click of the submit button, reflective essays may require the instructor to go through the work thoroughly and assess using the criteria, making it difficult to get immediate constructive feedback showcasing their knowledge. However, this short reflective essay will allow the instructor to review the work and provide immediate feedback. The instructor will also review the work and provide immediate feedback with scores as at the first submission. The understanding of the concepts will be graded out of 12 points. All the prompts will each have a maximum of 2 points in this assessment. Students will also know whether they have passed or failed from the feedback from the instructor. The assessment results will be analyzed to help the instructor improve their learning and teaching by improving content and teaching and learning materials. Developing Formative Assessments Discussion
The feedback will entail performance from not competent to distinguished per section and comments on areas needing improvement. The students who score approaching competent and non-competent in any section must revise their work to score “competent.” The instructor will comment on the paper and provide written feedback which will be delayed. According to Martin et al. (2020), instructors can go further to explain specific instructions, give examples, and illustrate what is required to enhance the students’ understanding for better performance in the future. Students work will be assessed based on the understanding and application of learned knowledge. The feedback provided by the instructor will go a long way toward ensuring learners understand each question and improve their knowledge
B3 Principles of Assessment and Theory Utilized
The development of these assessment items was each informed by the four principles of assessment. The goal is to enhance understanding and build on existing knowledge to produce desired outcomes. The overall goal of the course is to enable BScNs to function in communities. The first principle is that every assessment should be authentic. According to this assessment principle, learners must produce their work (without the help of others) to help establish that learning has occurred (Sotiriadou et al., 2020)Developing Formative Assessments Discussion. The learners will produce individual work, which the instructor will assess. Unlike discussion forums, the assignment submission will not be available to others to prevent them from copying from each other. It will thus help promote authenticity and individual critical and creative thinking. Students cannot view each other’s work, making them authentic.
The assessment must also be current based on the assessment time (Villarroel et al., 2020). The formative assessment described will be implemented during week three in the middle of the course, making it time-appropriate. The other principle is that all assessments must be sufficient to meet the assessment criteria and learning outcomes. The assessments will be graded in four categories based on their ability to follow instructions and meet the desired quality. As assessed and determined earlier, the assessment items align with the student learning objectives and course objectives and match the correct bloom’s taxonomy domains and levels. The last principle is that the assessments must be reliable and consistent with all learners over time (Villarroel et al., 2020)Developing Formative Assessments Discussion. The class is synchronous, meaning that all BSNs study the same content and do the assessments simultaneously. The principles were significant in informing all the activities in the various stages of the assessment’s development.
The constructivist theory was used to develop course outlines and elements and is also an integral theory in assessment. The theory supports learning through assessment through its various postulations and view of assessment. According to the theory, learning occurs when individuals activate prior knowledge to enhance their understanding of new knowledge and concepts. In addition, learning is internally controlled, and understanding how the learners understand concepts is crucial (Khan & Khan, 2019). The theory’s construct helped develop the first assessment item, which required students to explain their understanding of disaster preparedness. The theory also holds that cretin cognitive dissonance is vital; it occurs when new ideas are presented, and the activities are challenging enough to the learners. Challenging activities engage learners to think critically, unlike simple tasks that sometimes demotivate students and diminish critical and creative thinking, as supported by the constructivism theory (Mayer, 2019)Developing Formative Assessments Discussion. The rest of the assignment prompts were built upon this construct.
Each idea supported the next idea and understanding the previous item helped the student complete the assessment. The second item required the students to use their prior knowledge and findings from resources to determine the activities in this stage and the nurses’ roles in each stage. The third item required the student to analyze the activities, determine the stakeholders in this stage, and explain why they are needed and the consequences of their absence. The fourth item required BSNs to determine their local community needs. The item will help nurses relate to their current assessment to ensure realistic learning. It connects to their world, which ensures students find significance in learning and the assessments. These needs will then help in disaster planning.
The last step is determining communication strategies to work with these stakeholders identified in the previous item. These items help discover new knowledge and as the learner builds on the existing knowledge, typical of constructivists theory. The theory also holds that feedback is crucial to learning and helps build on prior knowledge (Reid-Martinez & Grooms, 2021)Developing Formative Assessments Discussion. The theory helped develop an assessment criterion against which instructors will assess students’ performance. The instructor will also provide feedback on areas to improve and how to improve them, thus helping the students to participate in reflective practice and enhance their knowledge and competence. Reid-Martinez and Grooms (2021) note that the constructivism theory encourages feedback for personal reflection and growth.
Barriers to Implementing Assessment in an Online Environment
Technological support and network availability are significant to online assessment. Low network coverage may make it difficult to do a time-bound online test. Technological support in online tests is important. Shraim (2019) states that too often, instructors use external sites when administering examinations to minimize students’ cheating or use other tabs to search for answers. A lack of knowledge to navigate these technologies and the rules applied can lead to students being locked out of their exams and having poor scores (Saiyad et al., 2020)Developing Formative Assessments Discussion. This assessment bypasses these problems by providing an assessment with instructions that are simple to access and follow through. The design choice allows the students to have much flexibility on when they can do and upload the assignment, hence avoiding the problems presented by network and technological issues in online exams and quizzes (Shraim, 2020). Learners often complain that they were locked out of an assessment and have limited time to access them, hence poor scores. Thus, this assessment design choice helps avoid several problems and will thus promote the achievement of better and more reliable results.
Conclusion
Formative assessments are done during the course and help assess students’ competence in an area and also help determine areas for improvement. It is crucial to align assessment activities with the student learning course objectives. Theories such as the constructivism theory can help inform learning elements and activities and learning assessment. Assessment should also utilize the theories to ensure a solid framework that develops competencies to enable nurses to function collaboratively in communities. The reflective essay with prompts will help nurses reflect on their understanding of the topic. Formative assessments are thus integral in assessing knowledge, determining areas for improvement, and improving these areas.
References
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Khan, S., & Khan, R. A. (2019). Online assessments: Exploring perspectives of university students. Education and Information Technologies, 24(1), 661-677. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-018-9797-0
Lestari, P., Ritonga, R., Ruliana, P., & Br Barus, C. C. (2020). Disaster communication uses field training exercise simulation as an important aspect of disaster risk reduction. Journal Komunikasi: Malaysian Journal of Communication, 36(1), 166-186. https://doi.org/10.17576/JKMJC-2020-3601-10
Martin, F., Wang, C., & Sadaf, A. (2020). Facilitation matters: Instructor perception of helpfulness of facilitation strategies in online courses. Online Learning, 24(1), 28-49. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i1.1980
Mayer, R. E. (2019). Thirty years of research on online learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 33(2), 152–159. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3482
Pandey, C. L. (2019). Making communities disaster-resilient: Challenges and prospects for community engagement in Nepal. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, 28(1), 106-118. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-05-2018-0156
Reid-Martinez, K., & Grooms, L. D. (2021). Constructivism in 21st-century online learning. In Handbook of research on modern educational technologies, applications, and management (pp. 730-743). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-3476-2.ch045
Rice, R. M., & Jahn, J. L. (2020). Disaster resilience as communication practice: Remembering and forgetting lessons from past disasters through practices that prepare for the next one. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 48(1), 136-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2019.1704830
Ryan, B., Johnston, K. A., Taylor, M., & McAndrew, R. (2020). Community engagement for disaster preparedness: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 49, 101655. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101655
Saiyad, S., Virk, A., Mahajan, R., & Singh, T. (2020). Online teaching in medical training: Establishing good online teaching practices from cumulative experience. International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research, 10(3), 149. https://doi.org/10.4103%2Fijabmr.IJABMR_358_20
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Shraim, K. (2019). Online examination practices in higher education institutions: learners’ perspectives. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 20(4), 185–196. https://doi.org/10.17718/tojde.640588
Sotiriadou, P., Logan, D., Daly, A., & Guest, R. (2020). The role of authentic assessment to preserve academic integrity and promote skill development and employability. Studies in Higher Education, 45(11), 2132-2148. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1582015
Villarroel, V., Boud, D., Bloxham, S., Bruna, D., & Bruna, C. (2020). Using principles of authentic assessment to redesign written examinations and tests. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 57(1), 38-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2018.1564882 Developing Formative Assessments Discussion
