AfL in Practice

The main thrust of AfL is the two-way communication of learning goals, quality criteria and feedback in the classroom in order to enable the student to make the next step in the learning process and to enable the teacher to adjust his teaching practices accordingly. In most classrooms, some or all of these practices are evident. For example, many teachers question their students in order to assess their learning strengths and weaknesses as they teach and provide feedback to the students. The ILT project aims to build on this existing practice by stressing the key role of AfL in each phase of the project.

AfL and the ILT Project

In order to support learning and assessment, a number of assessment instruments have been used to date.

Rubrics

These instruments have been designed so that learners can easily evaluate their progress against a range of descriptive quality criteria. When presented to the class before an activity, they enable the teacher to communicate the goals for that session. The involvement of the students in the design of these rubrics further develops the active role of the learner.

Electronic Portfolios

The project has used electronic portfolios as repositories of performance-based learning outcomes for each student. Moreover, the use of rubrics allows for these various portfolios to be assessed on an agreed scale of quality criteria.

As part of the electronic portfolio process the students are involved in:

• Collecting digital artefacts that demonstrate their understanding
• Selecting from this collection for particular views or portfolios
• Reflecting (on their own and with peers) on their portfolio to identify strengths, needs, strategies and future direction
• Rubrics
  - To self-evaluate their portfolio against a range of quality criteria.
  - To jointly evaluate their portfolio with the teacher to communicate goals and learning strategies

• What is Learning?

• Learning & Assessment

• Assessment For Learning

• Learning Theories

• Learning Preferences

• Reflective Learners