Assessing students' meaningful learning through a paper and pen test

• Main Author: Lapinid, Minie Rose C.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2011
• Subjects: Learning; Comprehension; Mathematics—Study and teaching; Educational Methods; Science and Mathematics Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/7809
• Institution: De La Salle University

Students’ meaningful learning can be assessed in a paper and pen test by deliberately asking questions that require them to indicate deep understanding of complex ideas that are relevant or real life. These questions are of higher order thinking skills outlined in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. This study aimed to describe the indicators for students’ meaningful learning after they had gone through a series of group activities where they discuss and engage in meaning making of an authentic task involving modeling of linear equations and functions. A six-item paper and pen test with open ended questions and problems was administered to a class of freshmen taking Bachelor of Science in Education major in Mathematics. In depth analysis of four selected students’ written solutions and explanations was used to describe their meaningful learning. Results indicated that three of the four students had positive learning outcomes than the errors they committed which were mostly due to careless miscalculations. Apart from doing menial tasks as graphing and doing computations, students were challenged to give reasons on the mathematical processes they needed to go through and apply what they learned in different contexts.