Sunday, June 25, 2023

Techniques of Teaching: ADDIE - Evalution & Evolution

 

Let's get straight to the point: In the original ADDIE instructional design model, the final 'E' stands for Evaluation, which is post-instruction assessment. Everyone probably understands this - it's the process of evaluating student learning to see if the anticipated educational objectives have been achieved. It also serves to assess the instructor's teaching performance. But I believe, in addition to evaluation, what's more critical is the continuous evolution of the course, which can be achieved through systematic methods for improvement and progress. Therefore, this 'E' in the ADDIE model can conveniently represent both Evaluation and Evolution. I'll separately discuss these three major aspects: learning evaluation, instructor evaluation, and instructional evolution.

Learning Evaluation

When you think about learning evaluation, for most people, the immediate instinct is to think of exams! Perhaps because we've been tested from a young age, we've rigidly come to equate exams with evaluation! But if we pause and think about it, do exams truly align with the objectives of corporate training? For instance, in the core course I teach on presentation skills – Professional Presentation Power, scoring full marks on a knowledge test about presentations seems irrelevant to whether the person can actually deliver a powerful presentation. Or memorizing all the articles about "teaching techniques" is completely separate from whether one can effectively teach.

Therefore, when considering learning evaluation, please recall your initial teaching objectives: Why did you create this course in the first place? What were the course goals? What problem was it meant to solve? For example, the aim of the "presentation skills" course is to enhance everyone's ability to deliver presentations, solving problems like stage fright, lack of presentation structure, and lack of engagement. The aim is to teach everyone systematic presentation preparation, delivery techniques (including introduction, body, and conclusion), and to improve slide creation skills. The method of evaluation in this case is simple: just get on stage and present - that's the best evaluation! When I recently taught Professional Presentation Power at the National Laboratory Research Institute, apart from on-stage practice during the first day of the class, I also planned a verification day on the second day. Everyone had to prepare a professional presentation and deliver it on the second day to me and other professional staff from various centers. Even more daunting, there was a third day: everyone had to present to the supervisors of their respective centers! That's no joking matter! After these successive practice challenges, some participants' presentation skills truly evolved remarkably! Facilitating learning, not testing, is the real objective of student evaluation!

Learning Evaluation in Stellar Courses

Let's provide a few more examples: In MJ's (Teacher Lin Mingzhang) "Super Numeric Power," the evaluation is whether or not you can directly look at financial reports and pick out good or bad companies. After the course, give the students a financial report and they can instantly predict the company's operation and future! (Impressive!); In Adam's (Teacher Zhou Shuolun) "From Creativity to Innovation," students can immediately use the innovative thinking methods taught in the course to implement forced association for their own company's products and systematically apply top-tier companies' innovative methods (such powerful creativity); In Hsien's (Teacher Hsieh Wen-Hsien) "Teaching to Empower" course, the evaluation is whether you can systematically teach your professional technical course after class, taking a concept the other party doesn't understand and teaching and conveying it well, so they can understand in a snap and even put it into practice under your guidance (Truly empowering!). These are all top-notch corporate training courses I've personally taken part in, and the instructors were able to accomplish these teaching tasks in a short amount of time! They helped students progress from not knowing to knowing, from being unable to do, to being able to do!

Furthermore, because of the establishment of specific and challenging learning evaluations for students, teachers must think during the teaching process: Can what I am teaching now help students complete the final course evaluation? For instance, if the evaluation is "presentation ability on stage," then teaching a bunch of slides on how to match colors or arrange layouts seems unrelated to the evaluation. On the other hand, if the only evaluation is through exams, then teachers actually don't need to teach - they could just have everyone read and memorize from books!

Conclusion

During the process of E of ADDIE--Evalution, we must go back to the A--Analysis. Evalution is exsist for training goal, and can help teachers teach, help students learn. Don't miss the true goal of learning evalution just because it is easier to take a test!

There are evalution for students. And of course, there are evalution for teachers, too. we will discuss about it in the next article.



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