Student Assessment
As Free World U strives to become a leading educational resource on the Internet, we are developing a strategy to incorporate student assessment functionality into our site. Our flashcard system utilizes self-reporting by students to summarize their progress through the curriculum. Of course, this progress is only as valid as a student's self-reporting of their understanding of the material. Understandably, educational leaders, parents, and in some cases students themselves, want a more objective evaluation.
Our system is centered on the premise that students should progress through the curriculum at their own pace. We have no time restraints on our cards yet we are confident students will progress through our curriculum faster than other systems. If it takes 20 passes through the calculus cards to master the subject, so be it. We feel it will be more than made up for by the time the student saves by NOT having to repeatedly go through the material he/she knows already. Therefore, we see no reason to test assess students until AFTER they self-report knowing the material.
We are developing a system of student assessment that adequately measures a student's comprehension of the material he/she has reported learning while maintaining a parent's critical role in the homeschooling process. Parents (in the case of homeschoolers) will have access to a complete progress report of their children's advancement in the curriculum. Parents with multiple children using the system will be able to review the progress of all children from one central "control panel". Which subtopics does the student report mastering? Which subjects are completed? The parent will then have the option of asking the student to complete a multiple choice subset of flashcards. These cards will cover only material the student has reported mastering. The "quizzes" will be timed and graded. Parents can act on these grades as they see fit. One option would be to reset the subtopics/subjects that a student displays less than "acceptable" understanding of. This would require the student to go back in and complete the material again. The system will allow the automatic resetting of subtopics if the parent chooses to do so.
Our assessment procedures are in the early stages of development and we want to know what our users would like to see in this facet of our system. What information would parents like to have? What sorts of "quizzes" would students feel most comfortable with? Please email us at office@freeworldu.org or call us at (323)258-1616 with your suggestions and ideas.