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Things to Think About...
Educational materials must be instructionally sound or their purpose is defeated. Understanding instructional soundness and how it is determined requires a firm grasp of educational terminology. This section will look at the difference between goals and objectives, examine instructional methods and learning settings, and investigate assessment methods.
Until fairly recently, many educational settings and curricula were largely teacher- centered. Students were often viewed as empty vessels into which knowledge from teachers and textbooks could be poured. Assessment demanded little more than the regurgitation of previously learned facts or the reenactment of experiments. Some of the important ideas of education today include:
These approaches view students as active learners who bring something
to the table. Learners are capable of creating new knowledge from what they already know through new experiences and active investigation. Subject matter is no longer presented within isolated disciplines, but is linked to other disciplines so that learners see relationships in broader terms and with a perspective more in tune with the real world. All these changes in educational delivery require equivalent changes in the way we evaluate learning.
Traditional assessment methods considered effective in a teacher-centered model of education are inadequate for learner-centered, constructivist, interdisciplinary approaches. The latter are more appropriately assessed through projects, portfolios, presentations or other forms of authentic assessment.
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