Assessing Student Learning in Technology Education

Introduction

• Teachers must assess student learning and how well they have learned the content.
• Achievement standards are framed to explain what students should demonstrate by the end of their two-year band.
• Key Resources: Achievement standards, content descriptors.

Achievement Standards

• Broad perspective on student capabilities by the end of a term/set period.
• Should guide the development of assessment tasks and activities.
• Represents a spiral process: standards increase in complexity over time.

Assessment Techniques

• Observations: Watching students work to gauge understanding.
• Quizzes and Tests: Standard methods of checking specific knowledge.
• Projects: Main form of assessment in Technology Education.
  • Relate to processes and production content descriptors.
  • Projects are useful but not the main focus (the learning process is).
• Other Techniques: Essays, exams, varied tasks for diverse assessment.
  • Important to have variety to build student capacity in different formats.

Focus of Assessment

• Assessing based on learning aspects described in content descriptors and achievement standards.
• Example: Not focusing solely on the quality of a physical product (e.g., bridge strength) but on the learning objectives met through the project.

Developing Lesson Plans and Units

• Justify the choice of assessment approaches in lesson plans.
• Select appropriate methods aligned with content descriptors.
• Balance and variety in assessment techniques are crucial.

Generative AI in Assessment

• Activities using generative AI provided to create assessment tasks.
• Relating AI-generated tasks to content descriptors and achievement standards.

Conclusion

• Teachers should explore a range of assessment strategies.
• Assessments should facilitate and measure the learning process rather than just the final product.
• Use tools and techniques to diversify and justify assessment methods for comprehensive student evaluation.