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| Prof. Carol Mayford |
Colleagues, I appreciate this opportunity to speak to you one last time
before I head back to Chicago. First, I need to offer my thanks:
--to Helen, Gert, Jomo and Magda for recognizing the importance of
assessment to the FETs and for arranging for this Fulbright project. You had
the vision, and you were willing to work through all the administrative and
bureaucratic hassles that our two countries' embassies created in order to
get the project launched and see it through. I admire your dedication to
this project and your commitment to providing EWC staff with professional
development in assessment.
--to the campus managers for making me feel genuinely welcomed on your
campuses and for your willingness to share your knowledge and insights about
FETs and how they run. I learned so much from you for which I am eternally
grateful.
--to all those who transported me (and my husband David while he was
here) to various sites and saw to it that we had the opportunity to learn
about this part of South Africa and what it has to offer. It was wonderful
to have that time to get to know you on a personal basis and to share in
your family lives. I shall cherish that time that we had together.
--to all those on the campuses who provided administrative and technical
support for the training. You made it happen. Without your help, I'd have
been swimming in mayhem! Thanks so much for taking on those responsibilities
and so willingly giving of your time and talents to help me.
I feel very fortunate to have been selected to work with the lecturers
and administrative staff to provide training on the design, administration,
and marking of various types of assessments. It was a terrific opportunity
and helped to broaden my knowledge of assessment in vocational education. I
only hope that I gave back in the training as much as I learned.
EWC is now poised to move forward in very significant ways in the
assessment of student learning. You have taken on a leadership role among
the FETs in providing assessment training to lecturers. Hopefully, you will
be able to share what you have learned with other FETs and work together to
make certain that every FET lecturer acquires the knowledge and skills
needed to create, administer, and score quality assessments.
I was pleased to see Monica from DHET at our wrap-up session this week
and would hope that DHET would take on a leadership role in providing
assessment training, leading by example. I would also hope that DHET would
provide financial resources, personnel, and administrative support to FETs
to encourage them to launch assessment training efforts on each and every
campus.
I would also encourage DHET to continue to revise and refine the
Assessment Guidelines documents for the various N C(V) programmes. Those
documents currently contain much valuable information to guide the
development and implementation of strong assessment systems. However, the
Assessment Guidelines need additional work, particularly in the description
of the National Examination for each programme. Each programme needs a test
blueprint that provides a clear, detailed, and explicit plan for building
multiple test forms. To be maximally useful, I would suggest that the test
blueprint identify the particular learning outcomes to be assessed. It would
also be helpful if the test blueprint indicated the number of items that are
to be included on each test form, the percentage (or number) of items that
will measure each learning outcome, the item type(s) to be used to measure
each learning outcomež the cognitive complexity of the items to be used to
measure each learning outcome, the mark allocation, and the approximate time
requirements for the administration of the assessment. Having such detailed
test blueprints in place would provide needed direction to those who set the
national examinations, laying out the assessment requirements and helping to
ensure that the content covered on a programme's national examination is
parallel from year to year. Additionally, when clear and explicit test
blueprints for the national examinations are shared with lecturers, they
will be in a better position to make certain that they are aligning their
instruction to what it is that their students will need to demonstrate that
they know and are able to do.
Campus managers, you have an important role to play in furthering this
effort, as well. I would ask that you please support the six staff on each
of your campuses that have completed the assessment training as they now
begin the challenging work of designing a plan for training the other
lecturers on your campus. The training materials that we used are posted in
electronic form on a server that is accessible to all campuses so that they
will have those upon which to draw. The lecturers conducting the training
should feel free to modify those materials as needed to suit their purposes.
I created the training materials for EWC's use, so please encourage the
lecturers to adapt them to make them their own. I'd ask that you please
follow through to make certain that the training plans on each campus are
implemented. That's a crucial part of this train-the-trainer Fulbright
project. This work needs to continue in the able hands of your
lecturers.
Campus managers, you also play a critical role in helping to ensure that
the assessments that your lecturers are using are trustworthy and are
providing valid information about students' attainment of knowledge and
skills. Lecturers' assessments need to be turned in on schedule so that they
can be carefully reviewed. Conscientious review takes time, and it is
imperative that those reviews are carried out in a credible fashion.
In the training, I stressed the need - especially for the high-stakes,
summative assessments that really count - to go through three types of
rigorous review before they are administered: 1) a content
review, to make
certain that each item (or task) is accurately and appropriately measuring
its designated learning outcome; 2) a technical review, to make certain that
each item (or task) is technically sound and not flawed in its construction;
and 3) a fairness review, to make certain that each item (or task) does not
contain content that might be offensive to any subgroup of students, and
does not measure knowledge and/or skills that are irrelevant to the learning
outcome.
Lecturers' assessments need all three types of review in order to ensure
that the assessments are high quality and are doing their job. Employers of
your students need this type of evidence in order to be assured that
students that they will hire from FET programs have the knowledge and skills
required to perform effectively in the workplace. Employers need to know
that they can count on FETs to provide that assurance.
In closing, it has been a pleasure to work with you and to see the
terrific work that you are doing. I could not have imagined a more welcoming
place and a finer group of people with whom to work. I wish you all the best
that life has to offer, and I thank you again for your warm hospitality. I
hope that you will have the opportunity to visit the states and, especially,
to come to see my home- town, Chicago, where we can feast on Chicago-style
hotdogs, deep-dish pizza, and our version of an Iron Brew.
Professor Carol Mayford
University of Illinois; Chicago - USA.
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