Assessment continues

Assignment given to the students:

Groupwork done in the class considering everymans rights (jokamiehenoikeudet) in Finland. Presenting the outcomes of what needs to be considered when riding a horse in the public areas and roads, (safety aspects)

Safetydocument in stable business and customer services. In the presentation are described: what is a safety document, who makes it and why and when, what is in it and how often it should be updated.

Analysis of diverse equine sports in Finland, individual assignment about a chosen equine sport. Including: history, description of the sport and it's rules and competition system, horse material, how wide is the sport,  what are the chances for the sports in the future. Entrepreneurship possibilities and how much money is around this sport.

Assessment criteria:

1- knows the safety ways of actions and what influences on safe operational environment, knows the law of everymans rights, is able to describe the diverse equine sports and it's rules and competition system, reporting and working is clear and systematic

3- can analyse, notice, argument the aspects of safety and develop safety operational environment, knows the everymans rigts and knows how to apply them in practises with horses, can analyse  equine sports and their impacts on the whole equine industry, can analyse the rules and competition system and it's influences on horses and sports, reporting is analytical, clear, systematic and professional

5- analyse, argument, develop and promote safety in the operational environment, knows the everymans rights and takes them under considering in planning the actions and business around equine sports,   can analyse versatilely, creatively, professionally diverse equine sports, competition system, rules and their impacts on equine industries, it's future and challenges and possibilities of entrepreneurship, reporting and working is clear, analytic, systematic, professional, creative, versatile and holistic.

This was the most difficult task, until now, but I did it and I think I did pretty good. Not perfect but as the first criteria I've ever done, it's ok. I started to look assessment through the learning outcomes and then how to get there. How the assignments done will help the students to get the knowledge and what and how will they be evaluated. Then by one part at the time I wrote the tasks and what are the contents and points that I will wan't the students to think and notice. And what will they learn from them.  Then I compared the levels to the assessment criteria from Hamk and this is my outcome.

Assessment and so on..

We got an assignment from Irma Kunnari and I'm not sure yet what to do with this and the deadline is tomorrow..

The aim of the assignment is that you develop your pedagogical competence by deepening your theoretical, practical and self-regulative knowledge about assessment.

1. Design the objective of your own assignment – What kind of things you like to focus on? What could be useful for you – and also for your practical teacher training? The idea is that you learn something new and interesting about assessment. You can  for example concentrate on assessment methods, peer assessment, self-assessment, using digital tools in assessment or you can investigate how students can create evidence of their competences in an innovative way.  Use the ideas ( and material) brought up in contact day 13.2.2015.
2. Design the ways you learn: Do you need to read and explore about assessment ( see you books in this course or find new material from the net)? Do you have the possibility to try new methods in practice? Do you need to interview somebody? Etc.
3. Present your learning outcomes in your personal blog ( in your personal way) by 11.3.2015. Remember to write what were your references ( links to nice material in the web for the others also). Please elaborate: What did you learn? How did you learn? What was most meaningful findings for yourself?

Question 1. Everything about this is new to me!

Question 2. I have read and watched videos about assessment but it seems that assessment is always just a small part of book, guides and other material related to teaching.  But in real life it is not! Everything has to do with assessment criteria. I think that this is possible to learn properly only by doing and failing several times.Here's some material I've been reading:
https://www.avoin.helsinki.fi/opettajille/arviointi.htm
http://www15.uta.fi/arkisto/verkkotutor/arviointi.htm
http://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/wikimedia/images/wikiversity/fi/9/9d/Oppimisenarviointimenetelmat.pdf

Question 3. Read again  parts 1. and 2.

Back to question 1. As I'm starting my PTT next week I probably should learn to make assessment criteria for the course before that. So my objective will be creating assessment criteria for the course Equine Sports. Grading is done by numbers 1 to 5. (Why do we need number in the first place? I don't think anybody looks at them after graduating.)

Learning targets for the course: The student can define the types of equine sports, competition systems and requirements of horse material and framework for equine sports in Finland and plan and organize a horse event in a safe manner.  

There will not be a final exam but I will give the students two learning assignments to do which they will present in the classroom. Plus the tasks we will do in class.   continue..

I really should write more often my learning diary..

The christmas break was needed...

 In january we started a new subject: Guidance of learning and assessment.

Again a subject that I know nothing beforehand.  (I hate to start every task with this sentence.) This course we learned (and still continue) about how to guide students in learning process, how to use and study in different learning environments and about assessment. It seems that the assessment is the most hard and difficult thing in the whole teaching.

We did a presentation about learning environments in february. In a good learning environment are considered its physical, psychological and social aspects. Always the goal of the studies has to be in mind, what is the meaning and the wanted outcomes of the studying? How to organize the learning environment so that it benefits learning the most? In my teaching field, horses and equine industries, the best way and the best learning environment is working in the stable. Or to organize the events around horses, like trotting races or riding competitions. This brings me into planning my PTT course: Equine sports

The course is 5 credits in total but my part for the PTT will be 2,5 credits since the other half will be organized in the autumn. The course contains the different equine sports we have in Finland, how they are organized and the safety aspects included. Students will also learn about the rules of everymans rights considering horses and riding. I started the planning by trying to make the assessment criteria but it's too hard and I just have to get more knowledge about it before I can actually write them.  The other thing difficult (well everything about this is extremely difficult and I don't wan't to fail!) are the teaching methods and so on. We are now doing assignments about pedacogical content knowledge and I hope to learn something about the methods and how to apply them in real world teaching. It's so hard when I still have to learn these things my self and at the same time try to plan my teaching without being sure of what do these theories mean. Am I thinking about the right things even?