Designing online assessment tools for disengaged youth

Abstract

This article reports on the development of online assessment tools for disengaged youth in flexible learning environments. Sociocultural theories of learning and assessment and Bourdieu's sociological concepts of capital and exchange were used to design a purpose-built content management system. This design experiment engaged participants in assessment that led to the exchange of self, peer and teacher judgements for credentialing. This collaborative approach required students and teachers to adapt and amend social networking practices for students to submit and judge their own and others' work using comments, ratings, keywords and tags. Students and teachers refined their evaluative expertise across contexts, and negotiated meanings and values of digital works, which gave rise to revised versions and emergent assessment criteria. By combining social networking tools with sociological models of capital, assessment activities related to students' digital productions were understood as valuations and judgements within an emergent, negotiable social field of exchange.

Keywords:

• flexible learning
• authentic assessment
• cultural capital
• social media
• disengaged youth
• online learning and assessment tools

Acknowledgements

The team would like to acknowledge our joint funding arrangement between Queensland University of Technology, Australian Research Council, Edmund Rice Education Australia and Brisbane City Council.

Notes on contributors

Andy Brader teaches and researches at Music Technology for Youth+ in Melbourne, Australia. He is an adjunct fellow with the Victorian Institute for Education, Diversity and Lifelong Learning.

Allan Luke is Emeritus Professor at Queensland University of Technology and has developed research projects in early literacy accountability and assessment, and comparative pedagogies. Allan Luke's published work focuses on language and literacy, education discourse analysis, curriculum theory and policy.

Val Klenowski is a Professor of Education at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She has research interests in curriculum and assessment reform and development, evaluation, assessment and learning and social justice issues. Val has published in the fields of assessment and learning, curriculum and evaluation.

Stephen Connolly is a researcher and teacher at Queensland University of Technology. His current work is on assessment practices in Flexible Learning contexts and the use of social-networking-eportfolio systems in educational settings.

Adib Behzadpour has been a research assistant and Masters Degree student on the Sustainable selves: A new assessment model for marginalised secondary students research project at Queensland University of Technology.