Card games and robots: Assessment design workshop with Dr Yoon Jeon “YJ” Kim from MIT
31 October 2017
I attended an extremely engaging workshop on embedded assessment design led by Dr Yoon Jeon “YJ” Kim from MIT, following our successful symposium on Re-Imagining Assessment.
We started off with some robust discussions about rubric design stimulated by the MetaRubric card game which YJ uses with academics in the MIT Teaching Systems Lab. We argued over what should be represented in the criteria, and then argued over how the criteria were represented, but eventually came to some conclusions about design principles for rubrics. We concluded that we need to make sufficient time to discuss & create rubrics, with the right people in the room, and work to consensus about what should be included.
Next, we discussed how our ideas about what we need to assess students on, and the tools available to do that, may change in the future. 21st century competencies such as Deakin’s Graduate Learning Outcomes are becoming even more critical to remain relevant as technology advances. Many jobs in the future may be done by artificial intelligence (to find out if yours will be, head to https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/) and so the world of work is likely to change. We need to prepare and assess students for such a future. Evidence Centered Design is a key way of designing & assessing, which employs game-based learning to great effect, as we saw in this example, Physics Playground.
Workshop participants seemed to already be doing a relatively good job at assessing in innovative ways, tackling the challenge of assessing those 21st century competencies, but there was still a long way to go in terms of everyone doing it well in all areas. We were challenged to design some new assessments, combining a range of learning outcomes. Finally, YJ encouraged us to include some playfulness or fun in our assessments: while our students will definitely realise they’re being assessed (whether or not it is game-based), there’s no reason not to make it a little fun and enjoyable along the way, just like the workshop itself!
