Blog #3

Formative and Summative Assessment

Formative assessment falls under the basic assessment objective and assessing learning. An example of formative assessment would be giving an informal questioner to students halfway through the semester on what they like and dislike about the teaching level. “Modified before its completed” as the course reader would so put it.

Summative assessment on the other hand takes place at the end of a learning unit. A prime example of summative assessment would be the end of course professor evaluations. Gathering the information on assessment at the very end of the course.

What is the difference between Criterion, Norm, and self-referenced interpretations?

All of these examples are interpretations of the measurements used in making standards. The first being Criterion interpretations, a measurement tool to determine if the applicant has successfully completed a level of competency in a subject matter. This would demonstrated most apparently by the use of standard tests… Private, Instrument, and Commercial written tests area all good examples of Criterion interpretations

Norm referenced are based on comparing ones knowledge through a course or subject with all the other students. Norm tests students on mastery of the material through group and not individual.

Self-referenced is one that I don’t quite understand being an assessment trait. This type of assessment I feel has no place in the aviation industry. As if the stereotypical hippy is feeding this style. No way have gaging between one another what has been learned. Someone that has acquired information, but not able to be adequately measured.

What is Self-Directed Learning

The self-directed learners are “sophisticated leaners”, someone far away from comparing myself. These learners are given free range of finding the way of learning by setting self-goals and self-evaluations. “They want feedback on how successfully they have integrated alternative perspectives into their work”. Personally I believe this type of learning does have a place in this world. But nothing around sophisticated and philosophical learning rings a bell in any aviation class I have taken… maybe flight theory HA.

CFI Blog #1

What is an Epistomology?

Epistomology refers to the theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge It addresses the questions:
What is knowledge?
How is knowledge acquired?
How do we know what we know?
(Cited Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 3, 1967, Macmillan, Inc.)

Epistomology is essentially the process of how we learn. How does a student get from point A to B and through what means did they achieve the said objectives they were after

Briefly describe the differences between Constructivist and Positivist

The article we were instructed to read with the chapter, Rethinking what we Know states Positivist beautifully by “For a positivist, then, knowledge constitutes factual and verifiable information”. This can translate easily into the things we have grown up doing through our education of reading a book filled with facts and then being tested on said facts. We are taught what is factual through scientific results and passed the information via a factual textual (or any other method) presentation.

Constructivist is knowledge through the experience of the facts. Again the article we read states this as “Knowledge comes into being only when a human being examines data and assigns meaning to it. Examples of this would be the teaching of something that is factual, and then in the flight lessons learning by means of experience. Thousands of possibilities are available for this example. We only truly tie things together after we have experienced them.

Which Epistomolgy do you identify with and why?

I believe that we need to have both to achieve a full well rounded experience of knowledge. A positivist environment must be in place first to have a well constructivist outcome though. How do would we understand the knowledge without first understanding the facts that we are trying to put together.

In instructing everything on the ground is all about being in the air. But how does one really all tie it together without actually experiencing it? A student could write down and chair fly the appropriate simulation of an engine fire during start tell he is blue in the face. But when its experienced for the first time (hopefully never), he can walk away from that experience having more knowledge than any book or instructor could ever teach him