Assessing Emergent Learning

Re: Assessing Emergent Learning

by Jaap Bosman -
Number of replies: 5

Student and teacher and peers need to look out for Emergent Learning artefacts. When someone produces an unexpected answer or learning product we mostly do think it a mistake or a false answer. We need to be carefull to call unexpected learning artefacts false or wrong. Artefacts = products of the student as a result of work in a course. 
Once we do recognize an artefact as a product of EL we could assess it. 
To assess these EL outcomes we need to use very broad objectives. The assesor needs to be an expert or a forum of experts in the field to recognize the EL outcome as useful and valuable. The expert is needed, because courses mostly do not use these very broad objectives and goals. 

Would it be possible to ask for emergent learning as a result of a course? Would EL be expetected when a student is doing synchronously  two courses in different fields? 

 

In reply to Jaap Bosman

Re: Assessing Emergent Learning

by Jenny Mackness -

Hello Jaap - great to see you here. I like the idea of Emergent Learning Artefacts, which could then be assessed. It makes me wonder if the arts subjects lend themselves more to this than other subjects.

I am thinking here of one of my sons who has just completed a Masters in Music Technology. I think there was lots of emergent learning in that course because the students decided on their own research projects, which ultimately, in their final performance, had to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they had acquired over the course.

I went to see the final performances and they were all completely different. The tutors couldn't have known before hand what to expect - but presumably they had some sort of rubric to assess these performances.

In reply to Jaap Bosman

Re: Assessing Emergent Learning

by Kathleen Zarubin -

YES .... artefacts or 'evidence'  of something 

on which some kind of assessment judgement can be made -

& then compared to 'something else' (benchmarks / standards / required outcomes ????)  

 

This is the concept and process of 'assessment'  that I find absolutely FASCINATING  and really really important & valid & valueable for some reason ... 

In reply to Jaap Bosman

Re: Assessing Emergent Learning

by Scott Johnson -

Hi Jaap,

Does emergent learning have to produce something unique or odd? If the artifact appeared out of place we might ask for an explanation that would show a new twist in logic or viewpoint. Even the obvious needs to account for itself but the oddity might be a richer source of explanations.

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Assessing Emergent Learning

by Jaap Bosman -

Hi Scott, Good Question. The difficult question is What is New or what is Unique. The teacher should know what is new for the student, for that is what is important. New and unique are personal subjective terms. 

So if a little boy is gaming about the Roman Empire and while playing is  learning  historecal and cultural knowledage in the game than for this little boy  it is New Knowledge. 

 

In reply to Jaap Bosman

Re: Assessing Emergent Learning

by Scott Johnson -

Jaap,

I would think all learning is personal subjective to the person who learns. The boy playing the game is operating (in his mind) the conditions of play through a series of understandings of what is expected next. His brain is also constructing new or deeper understandings of the complexity of the subject along with the enactment / expression of more mature strategy of play. Something is developing here that is embodied within the boy, not the game or his teacher.

Better play patterns demonstrate change in strategy and maybe New Knowledge is included and I'd say the teacher wasn't involved it this beyond providing access to the game. School directs material judged useful by the culture it springs from to a student in a form determined to be most easiy metabolized into a thing called learning. All this occures at the surface.

How do we get to the person as product of themselves over person as "product" of education. Before we claim that something we did caused learning we need evidence they were listening to us. Would this be an Artifact?