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Do you ever wonder how assessing students makes you a better teacher? If your answer is "yes," you're not alone. With an understanding of adult educators' assessment questions and concerns in mind, ProLiteracy and World Education have developed a series of four online courses for teachers that focus on student assessment as part of effective adult education.

What Every Teacher Should Know About Assessment

Standardized assessments are used everywhere in modern life, but few people really know how they are put together, how they should best be used, and what underlying principles govern their design. This course, the first in a cluster of assessment-related courses, is a layperson's guide to concepts such as reliability, validity, bias, and standard error of measurement. A basic knowledge of the concepts will not only equip you to better understand and deal with standardized assessments, but also help you as a teacher to develop better in-class assessments.

Documentation: Certificate of Completion will document 6 hours as completion time.
Course Facilitator: Carey Reid, World Education, Inc.
Course Dates: Coming in Spring 2009

Note: Adapted from Fundamentals of Assessment developed by the Massachusetts System for Adult Basic Education Support (SABES). SABES is funded by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Practitioners from Massachusetts: Please enroll in Fundamentals of Assessment at http://moodle.literacytent.org to receive certification.

Understanding and Using Published Assessments with Adult Learners

Published tests-standardized and non-standardized-are fixtures in adult basic education, but we rarely give much thought about their design, their intent, their strengths and limitations, and their impact on the field of adult education. This course will show you how to interpret and use these familiar tests to better instruct your students. Through this course you will:

• become acquainted with the main types of published reading assessments in use in adult basic education (ABE)
• understand the advantages and disadvantages of standardized and non-standardized reading tests
• examine how the U.S. Department of Education's National Reporting System (NRS) uses the results of standardized testing
• learn about additional resources and references that are available for pursuing a more in-depth knowledge of assessment in ABE.

Documentation: Certificate of Completion will document 12 hours as completion time.
Course Facilitator: Carey Reid, World Education, Inc.
Course Dates: Coming in Spring 2009

Assessments Developed by Teachers and Students

This course takes all the knowledge you've gained in the Fundamentals of Assessment course and helps you apply it to your classroom. By course's end, you will have expanded your assessment repertoire to include various tools to check day-to-day student progress, "push" your assessments beyond simple quizzes to more dynamic forms, and even involve your students more directly in assessment design. You will learn about

• "Backward lesson design": specifically, how assessments can guide and inform instruction by focusing on learning objectives, assessment design, and lesson activities
• Rubrics and other tools to communicate assessment criteria and expectations to students
• Using student- and teacher-reflection to improve assessment design and results
• Involving students in assessment design
• Using summative assessments
• Applying fundamental assessment principles
• Proven resources to assist in developing and scoring assessments

Documentation: Certificate of Completion will document 12 hours as completion time.
Course Facilitator: Carey Reid, World Education, Inc.

Course DatesNov 6th - Nov 13th