orfacsThis August, the Oregon Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (ORFACS) and OSU partnered to offer  a two-day workshop on how to develop proficiency-based assessment in the Family and Consumer Science (FACS) classroom.

Twenty nine teachers from across the state worked and collaborated to create coursework and rubrics that assesses students’ proficiency.  Trisha Richmond from South Medford High School, a pilot school in proficiency-based assessment, shared her work from her FACS classroom and inspired many teachers to focus on how to teach to standards and proficiency. Teachers took course syllabuses and aligned them with FACS national standards and Essential skills, then spent an afternoon with other teachers writing rubrics that will be used to assess proficiency in the standards.

A follow-up workshop will be held in Downtown Portland on Statewide in-service day Oct 11th, 2013 and anyone is welcome to attend and learn what other teachers are doing for proficiency-based education.

For more information contact OSU’s College of Education instructor Sara Wright at wrighsar@onid.orst.edu.

 

College of Education professor Shawn Rowe

As an assistant professor of science education at Oregon State University, Shawn Rowe studies how people learn about science and the ocean outside of the classroom.

According to Rowe, people do most of their learning over the course of their entire lives, rather than the years they spend in formal education.

Here, Rowe talks about “free choice learning,” and how his work can help promote it.