Predictive Evaluation – the Other Assessment

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© K.Becker & Springer Publishing

When I was studying Ed Tech there was a lot of emphasis on formative and summative evaluation. I never heard any of my professors talk about others. When I was working on the first chapter or my upcoming book, I realized there are TWO others: predictive, and confirmative. Go figure. I wonder why we never talked about those?

Many people are somewhat confused about the distinction between formative and summative evaluation.

Robert Stake has a great way to distinguish the two:

“When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative” (Scriven, 1991, p.19)

Although there is some overlap, the image shows how each relates to the design and development process. Here are brief definitions:

  • Formative evaluation tends to focus on the process and normally takes place before the intervention has been deployed.
  • Summative evaluation normally takes place after deployment and focuses on its overall effects.
  • Confirmative evaluation  is normally performed after the summative evaluation has been complete for some time, and its purpose is to confirm that the instruction is still effective weeks, months, and even years later.
  • Predictive evaluation takes place before the instruction is developed. As instructional interventions become more and more infused with technology, it becomes more important to do this. My 4PEG model for evaluating games is a predictive model.

Scriven, M. (1991). Beyond Formative and Summative Evaluation. In M. W. McLaughlin & D. C. Phillips (Eds.), Evaluation and education: at quarter century: National Society for the Study of Education.

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Learning Theory vs. Instructional Theory vs. Instructional Design Model

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When I was working on my PhD I had a hard time figuring out the difference between an ID model and an ID theory. No-one in my supervisory committee was able to give me an answer that made sense to me. I come from science where theory and model mean something quite different from what they do in Education. They could not explain it to me using the scientific definitions for these terms and there didn’t seem to be a clear distinction between them in education (I’ve talked about this before). It didn’t help that people seem to use the terms ID theory and ID model almost interchangeably.

There are sections in my book that connect learning theories, instructional theories, and instructional design models to game based learning and pedagogy, so I needed to find a way to distinguish these categories that made sense to me.

Here it is in its simplest form:

Learning Theory: Ideas about how people learn.

Instructional (Design) Theory: Ideas about how people should teach.

Instructional Design Model: A recipe for creating an instructional intervention.

 

Below we have an example of each: Attribution Theory (a learning theory), Discovery Learning (an instructional theory), and ADDIE (an instructional design model, sort of).

Can you see a problem? For one thing, there are instructional theories that have the word “learning” in them rather than instruction, even though they are clearly meant as ways to teach, or at least to organize instruction. There are also a few that seem to fit into multiple categories, but that’s a topic for a different post.

attribution theory

Attribution Theory, Weiner (1974)

discovery-learning

Discovery Learning, Bruner (1960)

addie-2

The ADDIE Model

 

 

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The Myth of Learning Styles…. Still

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LS-Games-12What are your favorite education myths?

A few weeks ago I blogged about Dale’s mythical “Cone of Experience”. These sorts of things seem to hang on quite tenaciously, and sometimes even gets perpetuated by experts in the field.

The learning styles thing is another. I’m not disputing that people have preferences, but actual styles? Nope. And yet, the paper I did on learning styles ten years ago is my second most popular paper on academia.edu. Go figure.

 

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What Schools Must Learn From LA’s iPad Debacle | WIRED

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What Schools Must Learn From LA’s iPad Debacle | WIRED.

Just catching up: this is from a few months back. We dealt with this back in the early 90s when our oldest was in school. It’s sad, but not surprising that things haven’t changed.

WHEN LOS ANGELES schools began handing out iPads in the fall of 2013, it looked like one of the country’s most ambitious rollouts of technology in the classroom. The city’s school district planned to spend $1.3 billion putting iPads, preloaded with the Pearson curriculum, in the hands of every student in every school.

Less than two years later, that ambitious plan now looks like a spectacularly foolish one. In August, the Los Angeles Unified School District halted its contract with Apple, as rumors swirled that Apple and Pearson may have received preferential treatment in the district’s procurement process, something the FBI is investigating.

…

According to Horn, who also is author of Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools, Los Angeles is a classic case of a school district getting caught up in the ed tech frenzy without fully thinking through why technology is important in the first place.

…

It’s not unusual even in an above-board bidding process for districts to start by choosing a vendor, instead of first discussing how that technology will be used in the first place.

…

You can make a change that makes sense on its own, but when it’s introduced to the complex setting of a school, the net effect is negative.

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Flashcards: The Secret to an Active Memory

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GoodmissionWho would have guessed?

Turns out, flashcards aren’t just for kids.

The Secret to an Active Memory | ExamTime.

This article promotes an app through goconqr* for creating flashcards, but there are other ways as well. Using a plugin called flippity, you can create your own flashcards using a Google spreadsheet. Personally, I like being able to own my own stuff, and I can do that better with Google (b/c I can do things offline).

goconqr is an online community where teachers can create and share content.

There’s a place for flashcards, just like there’s a place for drill too. Some things simply need to be memorized. That way they are handy when you need them.

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Failure Is Essential to Learning | Edutopia

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Just catching up: this is from earlier this year. Worth a read.

gopherFailure Is Essential to Learning | Edutopia.

How do you make failure students’ friend? Set a high standard and don’t be afraid to tell students that they haven’t met it. But in the next breath, give detailed suggestions on what they can do to improve. And, most important — though so often given short shrift — allow students the time, space, and support to make the revisions. In such a culture, failure does not mean, “You lose.” It means, “You can do better. We believe in you. Here is some feedback: revise, and try again.”

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Is the Clark-Kozma Debate still a Thing?

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clark-kozma debate My most popular academia.edu paper is this one: The Clark-Kozma Debate in the 21st Century. It ends up being my most popular paper almost every week. Go figure.

 

I wonder if that means the debate still rages, or if it simply means education faculties keep assigning it as research/reading?

I know that there are still some who claim media doesn’t matter. Oddly, these are often the same people who claim that media has a negative effect on us. (Make up your mind.They can’t both be true.)

What do you think?

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A really Great list: 30 Things To Tell Students You’ll Never See Again

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2001-max-school-1_wmThis is a really great list: 30 Things To Tell Students You’ll Never See Again.

Print this out and put it up on a wall somewhere where you’ll see it often.

Read it every day.

Seriously.

30 Things To Tell Students You’ll Never See Again 

1. Thank you.

2. Perspective is everything. Where your thoughts lead, your life will go.

2. It’s not about you. Nothing ever is.

3. Establish your own measures of success. Do this early on, and never look back.

4. Find courage in purpose and ideas, not some abstraction like “inside yourself.” Purpose can be courageous even when you’re afraid.

6. Use the wisdom around you. Learn to find wisdom everywhere. In nature, in music, in mistakes, in the quiet.

7. Pick your battles.

8. No one hates reading. You’re probably just a very picky reader. Most people walk into a bookstore surrounded by thousands of books, and may be deeply interested in only a few dozen. That’s normal. Find those few dozen.

9. Learn to laugh at yourself.

10. Surround yourself with inspiring people and ideas.

11. If you don’t like something about your life, change it. Nothing is worse than letting yourself down.

12. Leave things better than you found them.

13. Be brutally honest with yourself.

14. Question everything.

15. Having integrity means doing the right thing when no one is looking.

16. Think globally, act locally.

17. Digital citizenship is human citizenship. If we’re going be super-philosophical about things, your life isn’t yours, it’s everyone’s.

18. Trust yourself.

19. Your work and your life don’t have to be “separate.” Your “work” doesn’t necessarily mean a career, and definitely doesn’t mean “job.” Your work is your daily interaction with the world. Choose carefully.

20. Know who in your life to go to for what.

21. Talk less, listen more.

22. Happiness isn’t what you think it is. You’ve been taught by Hollywood and social convention that jobs, money, marriage, and always-on entertainment are the goals of life. But true happiness comes from, among other sources, a sense of alignment–of volition and agency. Freedom. Artistry. Craftsmanship. Connecting. Living out what you believe.

It may work out differently for you–and that’s the point. It’s different for everyone.

23. Every now and then start your thinking over. Reset your perspective. You’ll never really be able to do this, but try. All the crap you’ve been internalizing for all of these years you’ve done so without experience—and you’re likely to take those cognitive biases and emotional prejudices out with you into the early stages of your adult life.

24. Don’t do what your teachers and parents have told you to do. They love you, but they can’t possibly understand the complexity of your life and hopes and thoughts and dreams and fears, and will try to anyway, unwittingly projecting their own insecurities and aspirations on you. And when you follow it, your life will be an underwhelming, room temperature, sticky wet noodle. It’s your life, and thus your work.

25. Decide what is “good work” for you, and resist the urge to socialize it to get everyone’s approval. While the product of your work may ultimately be public, your own moment-to-moment interaction with that work is life, and is fiercely private. Every night when the lights go out and we’re all ultimately alone, those well-intentioned people that love you are somewhere being forced to confront their own work, and their own insecurities, hopes, frustrations, and dreams. And you with yours.

26. Prioritize endlessly. It’s not always easy to see that X will cause Y. As things change, don’t be afraid to let go of things that no longer fit.

27. Admit when you’re wrong.

28. I’m your teacher for life. If you ever need me, find me.

29. Don’t oversimplify what’s complex; don’t over-think what’s simple.

30. Try to align your behavior with your belief system and not the other way around.

1986-06-007-adam4_wmBy Terry Heick

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