Title: Ecological validity of assessment in education
Speakers: Sebastian Lesniewski
The presentation:
It is often argued that an educational programme should not focus solely on preparing students to complete their assessment tasks. Instead, a well-developed course should aim to equip students with skills that will help them be successful in their future academic and professional activities. However, such reasoning implies that the skills needed to perform the assessment tasks are insufficient and/or not directly relevant to the real-life requirements of the chosen discipline. In this webinar, I will argue that this dichotomy, between preparation for assessment and developing useful real-life skills, should have no place in education. Indeed, assessments incorporated into a course need to have the ecological validity: they need to resemble the tasks that the students are likely to perform to successfully function in their chosen disciplines. My principal argument is that preparation for assessment is a great opportunity to harness our students’ engagement and channel it into positive learning outcomes.
The speaker:
Sebastian Lesniewski is a PhD-qualified linguist, with over 20 years of experience in language education. He currently works as Senior Lecturer and Academic Lead for Research at Bloomsbury Institute London.
Title: CLIL classroom assessment: the process and the product
Speakers: Ali Shuhsuan Ke and Vivian Wen-Chi Liu
The presentation:
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is spreading rapidly worldwide. In Taiwan, over one thousand primary and secondary schools have been implementing or experimenting with CLIL courses since 2016, but they have lacked a valid assessment tool to measure students’ learning progress and promote effective learning.
This webinar will present how the LTTC developed appropriate assessment tools for CLIL programs through cross-curricular collaboration. Exemplary listening and speaking assessments will be used to demonstrate how language and content learning objectives can be fulfilled without compromising the depth of content knowledge. At the end of the presentation will be a Q&A session.
The speakers:
Ali Shuhsuan Ke currently serves as the Chief of the Training Division at the Language Training & Testing Center (LTTC) in Taiwan. She has been involved in the course design of professional development for bilingual teachers as well as English teacher training programs. She is currently overseeing various projects, covering topics such as the preparation of schoolteachers in readiness for EMI and CLIL programs, with a particular focus on developing a model that is more locally appropriate for Taiwan’s bilingual teachers.
Vivian Wen-Chi Liu is an English Language Researcher in the Training Division of the Language Training & Testing Center (LTTC) in Taiwan. She has taught English to various levels of learners over the past decade in Taiwan. Currently, she is responsible for the design and delivery of professional development programs related to the national bilingual education policies, including bilingual teacher training programs, English language training courses for CLIL teachers, and assessment tools for primary school students. She is also involved in developing teaching and learning resources for CLIL teachers’ communities.