Abstract:

Recent learner-centered, innovative pedagogical trends include student self- selection of their final evaluation content and delivery modes. (Ford, 2013; Spinney & Kerr, 2013). Surprisingly, many instructors and researchers have overlooked the possibilities of this unique, student evaluation choice. In this poster session doctoral students and their professor in a qualitative research class share a unique final examination structure titled, “Choice-Based Demonstration Assessment”.

Session participants will learn:
1) the benefits and potential obstacles to this new evaluation method;
2) how to help students make choices for their individual assessments, and
3) how to help students evaluate their assessment efforts.

Following an overview of this empowering unique evaluation approach, three doctoral students will describe their choice-based demonstration final examinations. Incorporating this innovative mode of delivery the students employed diverse arts-based, multimodal, semiotic communication systems (e.g., drawings, music, poetry, drama, film, dance, etc.) to portray their ideas, and reflect upon what they considered as the most important concepts and arts-based research practices they learned in the course and how they discovered integral lived experiences about themselves through the process. We learned this atypical, student choice-based demonstration assessment grounded in social constructivist (Vygotsky, 1978), empowerment (Rappaport, 1981), self-determination (Ryan and Deci 2008), and motivational theory (Maslow (1943) served as an educational experience for all, including the course professor. An informal end-of semester survey indicated most students agreed choice-based demonstration assessment enhanced their satisfaction and engagement with course material and operationalized the transparency of their thinking and knowledge as opposed to the traditional teacher-centered approach to assessment. Teacher-centered assessment places teachers in total control of what, how, and when students’ learning is assessed, and students’ ideas are disregarded and accessible only to the course instructor (Spinney & Kerr, 2013).

Keywords:

Student choice of final evaluation, innovative pedagogical trend.