Many of my colleagues have mentioned the importance of introducing test makers to students. If we teach them how to make exercises on their own, they will become involved in the learning process. In this way, students will become aware of the importance of their engagement and their new role in the classroom. Eventually, they will take control over their learning. The teacher will be there to guide them, facilitate the learning process or simply someone to lean on when problems arise.
In a comment to my previous post I mentioned an influential post by Doug Johnson from The Blue Skunk Blog: Creating Empowered Users where he says that instead of saying "Here's how you do it", we should ask the student "What have you tried?". By being LESS helpful, the teacher actually empowers the students to think independently, to rely on themselves and to become autonomous.
So far I have introduced my students to exercise-building on the ITESLJ website, where you can see some of their bilingual quizzes. However, what my students did, was to write the words in two languages and send them in an email to the site administrator who generated the quizzes. I believe that my students would enjoy going through all the stages of the quiz making process. Over the next school year I am going to make use of this weeks’ recommended websites and I am sure my students will benefit greatly from being involved in test making, be it only for practising purposes. Besides, I might use some of their creations for “real” test, which will make them more engaged and motivated.
Dear Arjana:
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that to encourage autonomy, the teacher should be "LESS helpful". But is s/he really being less helpful?
To reach this level, there should be a level of mutual understanding among the teaching-learning community about the roles of the teacher and the learner.
Being less helpful is more demanding from the teachers,I believe . It needs more work at the preparation stage , during and after the learning in order to cope up with individuals needs.
Yours
Hanan
Dear Arjana,
ReplyDeleteGood idea to have your students involved in test making.
I guess it is very good that you are able to test what you are learning in this course immediately, because you can give us a feedback on what's profitable or not.
Thankis for sharing!
Yours,
Elsa
Dear Arjana,
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that students should share the same responsibility in every step in their learning process. Some people think that the new job of teachers as a guide is an easy task. Absolutely not. It needs great effort. To be a guide, it means to oversee all the process and provide help in the right time for the right students. It needs to be very alert to every thing. Sometimes the freedom involved in autonomy needs some wisdom. So, teachers should deal with these new roles carefully.
Thanks for sharing your wonderful ideas
Yours,
Azhar