Archive for the ‘Angela Blog’ Category

Initial Assessment Tools

May 22nd, 2009 by Angela Rees

The Search for Spock initial assessment tools;

DfES recommend the following resources via their read write plus campaign http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/readwriteplus/

The Basic Skills Agency has produced “skills check” tools as a way of screening students to see if further initial assessment is required. http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/toolslibrary

Cambridge Training and Development (CTAD) “Target Skills” http://www.targetskills.net/ not much info here, but leads to publications pages.

West Nottinghamshire College have produced a Basic Keyskillbuilder although the links all lead to password protected moodle site where you can’t even log in as a guest user – so no use for anyone wishing to follow examples of good practice.

The only useful one here so far is the Basic Skills agency, available resources are; “Good Practice Guidelines” http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/pdf/Good_Practice_Guide.pdf which is subtitled “for literacy, language and numeracy teachers, subject support staff and adult learner supporters” . Who are these guidelines designed to help?

“Skills for Life is an ambitious strategy that is designed to address literacy, language and numeracy needs of all adults and young people. It covers all post-16 learners on learning programmes at levels from pre-Entry up to and including Level 2.”

So not all adults and young people as it doesn’t include level 3+ courses?

New search;

“Initial assessment in HE” returned the following document written in 2001, http://readingroom.lsc.gov.uk/pre2005/quality/goodpractice/initial-assessment-of-learning-and-support-needs-and-planning-learning-to-meet-needs.pdf which highlights some good points (this is from 2001 not found anything more recent yet…)

The trend appears to be to assess basic skills; literacy and numeracy, upon commencing a course, those who need help with either are picked up and support offered such as testing for dyslexia, there are relatively few references to screening mainstream students and where they are screened, it is only for “basic skills”

Otherwise existing qualifications are used as the startpoint to compare gaining new skills and knowledge against. But this doesn’t help determine what additional support the students need.

Posted in Initial assessment; the student experience

What questions to ask?

May 10th, 2009 by Angela Rees

The plan is to get the student perspective, find out what assessment is carried out and how the results benefit them. I have students who sat through literacy screening in September and still haven’t had the follow up support they need 8 months later. Maybe I work for a particularly bad example, maybe initial assessment is just another hoop to jump through, but why bother collecting the data if you’re not going to use it for the benefit of your students?

If I use the Ofsted criteria as a guide, what questions should I be asking the students?

Specialist staff? Who carries out the assessment? Course lecturer, personal tutor, specialist, online, self assessment?

Appropriate time? Start of the course? Interview?

Starting point, learning plan? Is it relevant, are the targets attainable, is it updated regularly?

Screening for literacy/numeracy?

Results, feedback?

Appropriate support?

What tools already exist for evaluating an initial assessment policy? This one from QIA helps staff to discuss initial assessment; http://excellence.qia.org.uk/media/attachments/108534/Initial-Assessment-Tool-v6.pdf

I’m off to play around with surveymonkey.com

Posted in Initial assessment; the student experience

Searching for literature to review

May 10th, 2009 by Angela Rees

The majority of available literature on the topic of initial assessment consists of policy documents aimed at providers of ESOL and Basic Skills education. There have been a number of government initiatives in the UK aimed at improving standards in literacy and numeracy.

The QCA says schools with half decent admissions procedures are the ones which will adequately identify support needs;  http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_7143.aspx

Ofsted www.excellencegateway.org.uk recommends “STL” as example of good practice… so off I went to Google STL; http://www.stltraining.co.uk/ and then emailed someone from STL to enquire about their assessment policy. One month on and I’ve heard nothing.

Anyway, the general guidance from Ofsted is that good practice in initial assessment must have;

  • Team approach to support
  • Detailed initial assessment
  • ILPs

What do their inspectors look out for?…

http://excellence.qia.org.uk/page.aspx?o=11F8361F-F327-4D61-BF27-43190802FECD

So now we know.

Posted in Initial assessment; the student experience

PlayPlay

Hello World!

May 10th, 2009 by Angela Rees

I figured that keeping a research journal hidden away on my desktop was no use to anyone, not even me. So here it is in all its lovely researcheryness.

Posted in Dissertation distractions 😉

  • Search Pontydysgu.org

    Social Media




    News Bites

    Cyborg patented?

    Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.


    Racial bias in algorithms

    From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter

    This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.


    Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years

    Via The Canary.

    The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).

    Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.

    The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.


    Quality Training

    From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.


    Other Pontydysgu Spaces

    • Pontydysgu on the Web

      pbwiki
      Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
      Sounds of the Bazaar Radio LIVE
      Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.

      We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.

  • Twitter

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Meta

  • Categories