UNIT 3 ASSESSING LEARNING OUTCOMES (LOs)

• (a) to obtain feedback about the course efficacy; 
• (b) to monitor the students achievements during the course; 
• (c) to provide the students with a final assessment of their learning.

This implies paying attention to 3 different and interrelated levels: 

• students motivation and satisfaction and related attitudes
• students progress in mastering new knowledge and understanding
• students capacity to apply new skills

For each of these levels instructors can develop observation rubrics to check students' achievements by identifying relevant evidence in relation to established benchmarks (see also Unit 4).

This work is also the basis for those courses that intend to provide participants with evidence-based micro-credentialing / digital badge certification.

1. Students motivation, satisfaction, attitudes

To what extent learners are finding the course useful and relevant?

What type of content and activities are motivating them?

What type of content, activities, software are considered too challenging or frustrating?

At the core of the students’ attitudes towards a learning process there is their level of motivation and this is often in relation to the core values and tools that the course is being perceived to offer them

The following is a list of key issues and factors that might be used in monitoring students’ motivation and satisfaction

1.1 Perceived relevance and usefulness of content

1.2 Perceived applicability of content

1.3 Opportunities and ease to apply/integrate learning into the workplace

1.4 Course perceived as adequately challenging, i.e. demanding of learners (but not too high demanding)

1.5 Course perceived as offering learners adequate balance between structure and space for self-direction

1.6 Software and apps usability and user friendliness

Students' feedback should contribute to review and to improve the teaching-learning design in order to make it as relevant and useful as possible for learners, the key factor to enhance their intrinsic motivation.

2. Students progress in mastering new knowledge and understanding

To what extent the new contents offered by the course are mastered by the students?

How can the course design scaffold (monitored) students self-paced learning?

Ensuring that learners turn the course's contents into proper knowledge and understanding is a core element in designing and phasing the learning process.

Important benchmarking tools for determining this is to offer tests that are in-built in the course as well as forms of  self-assessment by the learners. These assessment tools can contribute to both the final evaluation and grade (when foreseen) as well as to the monitoring and adjusting of the teaching-learning process as they provide useful information to the actual short term cognitive results.

The following three factors can be enhanced to trigger better understanding of the nature and significance of the contents that are being offered and processed:

• Relevance: The importance of the information in relation to students’ expectations and professional career
• Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness, and correctness of the data and text that is provided.
• Authority: The source of the information.

 Of course, multiple choice tests are the most common and easiest way to check knowledge, especially in online learning environments.

Nonetheless students achievements can also be monitored through open questions, collective discussions and collective writing, role-plays, simulations.

What type of behavioural performance can demonstrate students acquired skill(s)? 

What are the best ways to verify it?

While traditionally schooling has been focusing on acquiring new knowledge, the forestry education focus is also on how to put it into practice. 

In addition, when a content is perceived by the students as relevant and applicable, it will increase the students’ motivation.

How to apply it in practice? 

Whenever possible, it would be important to identify the parameters that enable to determine the applicability of content. 

It is important to distinguish between FORMATIVE assessment (providing feedback to the students about their actual expertise during the learning process) and SUMMATIVE assessment which is functional to the final grade and can discriminate between different performance thresholds.

In addition to what already mentioned in the previous section (such as role-plays and simulations) the course design can include to this purpose specific skills test, assignments, professional discussions based on research and/or problem based activities.