Ongoing assessment

Module 2 covered assessment and focused on the initial assessment to help both practitioners and learners understand the impact of their learning disabilities. This section includes ongoing assessment since it is such an integral part of the instructional process.

The need for ongoing monitoring and assessment is critical when working with adults with learning disabilities. The ongoing assessment process needs to be inclusive (both the learner and the practitioner) and it needs to be constructive and elaborative by providing suggestions to improve or enhance their learning. The ongoing assessment not only focuses on the learner's skill acquisition but also examines any learning strategies the learner is accessing, related accommodations and practitioner instructional approaches. Any one variable or combination of these variables could impact a learner's success. This emphasizes the need for frequent monitoring to help isolate any barriers immediately and the need to problem-solve together with the learner to identify alternative strategies, accommodations and instructional approaches.

Module 4 highlighted the need for learners to be responsible for charting their progress, which helps to increase motivation and self-determination and helps learners become responsible for their own learning. Although inquiry questions have already been addressed in previous modules, to help evaluate the use of learning strategies and accommodations, it is pertinent to cover them again.

Ongoing assessment of learning strategies

Providing feedback to learners on their strategy use is a critical part of helping them learn how to use a strategy effectively and how to change what they are doing when a particular approach is not working. It is also important to provide opportunities for learners to reflect upon their approach to and completion of the task. What aspects of the task did they complete well? What aspects were difficult? Did any problems arise, and what did they do to solve the problems? What might they do differently the next time they have to complete a similar task? It may be valuable to incorporate these questions into a self-evaluation checklist for the learners' reference.