Learner-Oriented Assessment (LOA) Teachers College Oct. 10-12, 2014.
What a wonderful opportunity to be able to attend this interesting conference on Learner-Oriented Assessment here at Teachers College. The first session of papers started Friday evening and all attendees were instructed to download an app on their electronic devices called “pigeonhole”. We could write our questions for the presenters and cast our vote (a sort of a Facebook “like” I suppose) on others’ questions. Very nice tool! I even gathered enough courage to “vote” for a few questions, ask some questions myself and see how others reacted while waiting for the roundtable discussion when the presenters would address the questions with the most votes.
James Purpura and Carolyn Turner opened the session and illustrated their framework for Learner Oriented Assessment in 7 steps. This framework will be illustrated in depth in a forthcoming publication. Many presentations focused on the role of the teacher as mediator with the learner as leader in his/her learning experience. There was a lot of discussion on how LOA differs from other classroom-based assessments and from assessment for learning practices. A participant even asked if LOA was just another name for ‘good teaching practices’!
Much was said about the common core standards, the content standards and how to bridge the assessment gap to include classroom assessment practices with these standards in mind.
Many important names in language testing participated. The organization was flawless, the papers were very professional and informed us all on the latest practices in learner-oriented assessment, classroom -based assessment, assessment for learning.