2.3 Assessment Mapping

In Deliverables 1 and 2, you identified the desired results of the instruction (your objectives). The second stage of Backward Design (Wiggins, & McTighe, 2005) is to determine what evidence you will accept to show that learners reached those results. Now that you have planned what information (content) you plan to provide your learners in the OER, it’s time to think about what instruction you might want to include in your OER to help scaffold your learners toward the learning objectives.

What’s the difference between information and instruction? Information is the collection of organized facts, procedures, and examples, which you mapped out in the previous section. Instruction includes practice of and feedback on the information (Wiley, 2021).

Vertebrae	Spine	Skeleton	Muscle	Systems
Objectives are the vertebrae of your OER.	Organized objectives become the spine of your OER.	The Table of Contents acts as a skeleton for your OER.	The Content you create or revise adds muscle to the skeleton of your OER.	The Assessments you add are the systems that make your OER work.

^{Thoracic Vertebrae by Unknown Author, used under CC BY-SA 4.0 and Vertebral column – colored by Henry Vandyke Carter, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Anatomy, man, human body by Unknown Author, used under CC BY 4.0.}

Formative vs Summative Assessments

Summative assessments: these are assessments that measure student’s learning on major objectives. They are usually found in your course.

Example: high-stakes exams, final papers, presentations, created products

Note: These are the end result of the content and instruction you provide in your course.

Formative assessments: these are assessments that measure student’s learning of enabling objectives which help prepare the learners for reaching the major objectives in the summative assessments. They can be found in either your course or in your OER.

Example: low-stakes review quizzes, memorization of key facts, interactive practice

According to Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction (2012), once a learner has been given new information (content), instructors should:

• Allow them to apply the new information on their own. This means letting them practice, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes.
• Offer ways to integrate the knowledge into the what the learner already knows. This might look like offering opportunities for discussion, reflection, or presentation of the new information.

Gagne, in his Nine Events of Instruction (1965), also states that it is not enough to simply let learners practice with new content without offering immediate and explanatory feedback. Without built-in feedback, learners may be left confused, uncertain, or assume incorrection information.

Formative Assessments in your OER

Depending upon the OER platform you will select, formative assessments (practice, review, and interactivity) can look like interactive videos or simulations, multiple choice review questions, drag-and-drop ordering, and much more.  Some OER include tools that support notetaking or reflections of the student as they read and interact with the OER or help the student create things like outlines while they read.

In Chapter 1 and 2 of this Pressbook, you have had the opportunity to try out some of the formative assessment options available using H5P, an interactivity builder that lives in Pressbooks. Chapter 3 will offer more insight into formative assessment you can build in your OER using H5P and other tools.

The goal of this section is to help you design a general plan of what formative assessments and interactivity could be placed within your OER. The actual tool you choose and the building of those formative assessments will come later.

It still starts with your objectives

Just as the learning objectives informs the instructor what content needs to be provided to the learner, the learning objectives also inform the instructor what the summative and formative assessments will be. In this section, you will plan your summative assessments for your course and your formative assessments for your course and/or OER.

From objective to the end result

You might be wondering why you are being asked to map the summative assessment if it may not be included your OER. In order to identify the best practice and interactivity a learner will need (formative assessment), we have to first identify the ultimate goal for which they are practicing (summative assessment). The summative assessment will measure whether the student has reached the learning objective.

Remember that those measurable, student-centered objectives you worked on for Deliverable 1 inform the instructor what the summative assessment will be.

What’s This Tool? – H5P Single Choice Set

In your team’s OERFSJ Deliverables 1-5 spreadsheet, scroll to the right to find the OER Assessment Map section. Consider each objective in the Learning Objectives Covered column (in Table of Contents on the left) and determine how the student will demonstrate that learning objective by the end of the week or module in the course. Be as specific as possible. Several of your objectives may be measured in the same place, such as a quiz or presentation. Others may be measured in their own summative assessment. Whichever the case, state a planned summative assessment in the Summative Assessment column.

Note: If you are creating an OER for an existing course, you likely already have your summative assessments planned and created (high-stakes exams, final papers, presentations, etc.).  Typically, several objectives are measured within the same summative assessment. You will simply type in those existing summative assessments next to every learning objective it measures in your Summative Assessment column.

Consider how to scaffold and engage

The learning objective is the starting point. The summative assessment is the end point.

Looking at the learning gap between the learning objective and the summative assessment, consider what Formative Assessments (practices, reviews, etc.) might help the learner prepare for the Summative Assessment you wrote down. Consider also what other interactivities might engage your learner and help them gain a deeper understanding of the learning objective. This might look like using a branching scenario in which a learner has to make decisions based on what they read, an interactive video that requires them to pause and answer reflective questions, or something else.

Take another look at the example above, and note these final thoughts:

• Formative Assessments are low-stakes practices. They may or may not be graded. The third formative assessment above could also be used as the summative assessment. The difference is that the formative assessment will likely have several rounds of practice with feedback without grading the student on their performance. The summative assessment would be a high-stakes version of this formative assessment, likely using brand new – but similar – examples.
• Scaffold your formative assessments from easy to challenging. This stair-step approach helps your students slowly increase their understanding, ability, and confidence while maintaining their motivation.
• Whether these assessments are held in your classroom or embedded in your OER, always include immediate, explanatory feedback to the learner.

What’s This Tool? – H5P Single Choice Set

Be kind to your future self

While you have this content and these formative assessments in mind, now is the best time to find examples of what you envision using for your formative assessments and interactivity.

When evaluating examples of assessments to include in your OER, consider the following advice from the BCcampus OER Production Team:

1. Use examples that include a variety of people, organizations, geographies, and situations.
2. Use real-world scenarios that address diverse situations and contexts.
3. Avoid negative stereotypes or sensitive subjects in problems and applications unless the subject matter demands it.
4. Do not make assumptions about prior knowledge, especially around culturally specific examples. For example, not all students may be familiar with Western nursery rhymes or kids’ television from the 1990s.

You have now identified what types of formative assessments and interactivities you need for all parts of your OER, where you plan to place those formative assessments and interactivities within your OER, and examples of or links to the interactivity itself. Next, you will begin to consider and gather images, figures, and videos you may use in your OER.

Resources

BCcampus OER Production Team, “Diverse and Inclusive Representation in OER,” University of Virginia OER Learning Community Guide. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Gagné, R.M. (1965). The conditions of learning. New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston.

Merrill, M. D. (2012). First principles of instruction. John Wiley & Sons.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. ASCD.

Wiley, D. (2021, December 10). The difference between an informational resource and an educational resource. Opencontent.org. https: opencontent.org/blob/archives/6892