Blog Post 1

From what you’ve seen of the course so far and in the course outline, which of the assessment strategies in your reading this week are being used in this course? Which are not being used? 

It is nice to see that a wide variety of assessment strategies are used throughout this course and for the most part align with the most effective assessment pedagogy that we have learned about throughout this week. There are both forms of formative and summative assessments woven throughout this course based on the syllabus and what I’ve seen so far. Summative assessment takes the form of what final grade will be based on the work completed throughout that is guided by the UVic undergraduate grading scale. 

Furthermore, formative assessment is woven throughout this course with the check-in for our blueprint assignment before we move on to the interactive learning resource. This course also lends itself to plenty of opportunities for peer assessment. Working with groups and meeting a handful of times per week creates opportunities for peers to work together and provide meaningful and important feedback to one another. Lastly, there are also opportunities for self-assessment as we can look back at our blog posts and choose a post we believe represents our best work. Overall it seems like this course does a good job of following through with the assessment pedagogy it is preaching. 

What learning theories (from Week 1) do these connect to? How does it compare to other courses you’ve taken in your studies?

I’d argue that you could find beliefs from all three learning theories, behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism, woven throughout the assessment strategies talked about above. For the most part, I’d say constructivism and cognitivism are the most present in this course based on the syllabus. During my time in the UVIC Elementary Ed program, most of the courses were structured the same with lots of opportunities for formative, self and peer assessments.