Špela Frantar, Gimnazija Bežigrad
Throughout the school year, I have been introducing a new way of teaching with applying formative assessment and transversal skills into the history lessons. Formative assessment of student’s work is an important process in school practice, which allows teacher to recognize students effort, in this case with the help of ePortfolio in Mahara on one hand, and on the other formative assessment of chosen transversal skill, especially working with sources; therefore, it sets down the development guidelines for more quality classes. Mahara ePortfolio System is a web application, which allows us to create its own learning process through prior knowledge, setting goals and strategies to collecting evidence of work and at the end self-evaluation of learning process. A good practice will be introduced on two unit planners that were covered in third year of high school education. The first one is Unification of Italy and the second Colonialism and Imperialism. Through the historical content, a new experience was presented to students – from the start, where the students have been informed about their work and the first difficulties appeared, until the upgrade of transversal skills, digital competence and students learning practice. At the beginning of the project, students learnt more about the group work, the rules of proper communication and collaboration and the meaning of Bloom taxonomy when forming good question and working sheets. With the help of peer assessment students managed to improve their work and assimilate new knowledge. Later one the focus shift on individual work with the help of different historical sources and information literacy and digital skills. Students had to according to five elements of formative assessment, develop their content and process aims. Students were satisfied with the new teaching approach, however, the project itself with all objectives pointed out some imperfections, but the most important was for students finding a responsibility for their own teaching process.
