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Assessing Agile PBL

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Problem-based Learning into the Future

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Abstract

As suggested in Chap. 4, the learning outcomes we imagined for an agile PBL ecology for learning in this book not only do include (inter)disciplinary skills and knowledge but instead constitute a whole way-of-being, which includes an attitude and disposition. Agile PBL serves as a curricular and pedagogical vehicle to facilitate the development of this way-of-being among students so that they learn and develop adaptive expertise while in their current studies and beyond the micro-context of the university as lifelong learners. This also brings with it the need to reconceptualise assessment, as it raises the question of how we can, or should, assess such learning outcomes, in particular, the intangible ones such as ‘attitude’ and ‘disposition’, which are notoriously difficult to measure. The traditional testing assessment paradigm and practices do not align with Barrow’s essentials of PBL conceptualised 50 years ago, particularly not as they relate to the continuous and reiterative participation of students in the teaching and learning process and activities, in assessment activities and in authentic assessment problems or tasks. They align even less with agile PBL. In this chapter, we discuss the challenges faced in transforming assessment practices, recent thinking around assessments that are aligned to agile PBL’s intentions and goals of developing a way-of-being, and the tensions and possibilities associated with assessments for learning. Central to all of this is the position of assessment in the context of an overall agile PBL ecology for learning.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

    Megan Yih Chyn A. Kek

  2. Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China

    Henk Huijser

  3. Batchelor Institute, Batchelor, NT, Australia

    Henk Huijser

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  1. Megan Yih Chyn A. Kek
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  2. Henk Huijser
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Kek, M.Y.C.A., Huijser, H. (2017). Assessing Agile PBL. In: Problem-based Learning into the Future. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2454-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2454-2_5

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