Abstract:

This presentation argues that there is a gap between social media technology use for teaching and learning and the technology used in assessment practices (Silseth & Gilje, 2017). While social media such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and news feeds is increasingly used in teaching and learning, on the other hand, assessment is often still only in traditional essay form and frequently via pen and paper. The reasons for traditional forms of assessment may be due to issues of reliability, fairness and adequate frameworks to assess student work that utilises social media. The aim of this research was to investigate the extent to which teachers believed there was alignment between learning outcomes, activities and assessment. This presentation describes findings from a small-scale case study that utilized qualitative data from Student Evaluations of the Paper (SEP) and from online surveys from four cohorts of participating teachers in a post-graduate adult literacy and numeracy (ALLN) professional development programme. There were three important findings. First, alignment of the course between outcomes, activities and assessments was clearly visible to the learners. Second, the alignment was relevant to the teachers and involved them in constructing their own learning through authentic and practical activities and assessment. Third, course outcomes, activities and assessment tasks were aligned with multi-literacy skills. This research has implications for how academics assess students who are predominantly taught using social media and yet are assessed in more traditional ways. The presentation argues for academics to take risks with assessment and social media and to design courses that are constructively aligned and connect learners with outcomes, activities and assessment that include an explicit focus on teaching the multi-literacy skills required in a world that is becoming increasingly digital.

Keywords:

Social media, learning and teaching, new assessment practices, multi-literacies.