Utilizing Active Learning and Backwards Design to Articulate Learning Outcomes and Maximize Student Learning: An Integrating Model of Formative and Summative Assessment

Active learning is becoming a popular catch-phrase in education but it is much more than a fad or a bunch of “tips and tricks” on how to get students engaged in class. Active Learning is nothing less than a full-fledged paradigm shift in teaching and learning. This evidence-based approach is grounded in research about how the human brain learns and calls for significant changes to the way college courses are designed and to the roles of students and teachers in these courses. This session will explore the context of the emerging shift in education away from the Transmission of Knowledge paradigm toward the Active Learning perspective, with a detailed focus on the cornerstone of Active Learning: Backwards Design. Backwards design uses carefully articulated course learning outcomes as the basis to create a course that includes the necessary opportunities for practice, assessment, and feedback that will foster real learning and student success. In a collaborative conversation, participants will discuss strategies to analyze the relationship between the “content” or topics of a course and the learning outcomes for that course, in an effort to delineate a process of developing meaningful and worthwhile course outcomes and unpacking these outcomes to uncover cognitive ability and implantation agility. In an active learning course, the teacher’s primary job is to design formative assessments that allow students to practice skills and make connections and then to use these “teachable moments” to offer feedback to steer students toward efficient and productive learning. Teachers, then, need to design authentic and relevant summative assessments where students can showcase what they have learned. In our time together in this interactive session, we will: • Investigate several formative → summative assessment schemes and models • Discuss five Active Learning formative assessment techniques that can be adapted to any course and used in-class and/or out-of-class • Consider the sorts of summative assessments that make the most sense in an Active Learning class. • Provide a case analysis of a successful course that employed this model • Offer resources and citations for additional information and instructional application