Guidelines for developing and using e-assessments with vocational learners : project overview

"Mā te rongo, ka mōhio; mā te mōhio, ka mārama; mā te mārama, ka mātautau” From practice comes understanding, from understanding comes knowing, from knowing comes expertise. SUMMARY: This project brought together a team of vocational educators from three Institutes of Technology or Polytechnics (ITPs) and an iwi-led tertiary partnership, to create a set of guidelines for the development and implementation of e-assessments for learning. As New Zealand qualification outcomes have shifted from competency-based to graduate profile outcomes-based qualifications, there is a need to support students’ learning towards meeting graduate profiles. Assessments for learning are key components of sound learning programmes. Assessments for learning, also called formative assessments, are planned learning activities which lead to occasions for learners or teachers to check on learning progress. Opportunities for feedback provide learners with advice to judge their learning and plan towards future improvements, leading to increased learner achievement and efficacy. The affordances provided by digital devices, tools and apps, increase opportunities for the implementation of useful assessments for learning which meet learners’ needs. Digital technologies also allow access to some of the difficult to describe, or measure, skills and dispositions, which underpin vocational education. These ‘invisible’ attributes contribute towards learners ‘becoming’ (i.e. attainment of an occupational identity) as they progress towards meeting the graduate profile outcomes defined by NZ qualifications. The guidelines are a distillation of the learnings achieved through iterations of Participative Action Research (PAR) cycles by each sub-project team. These guidelines can be used to support the development, implementation and evaluation of e-assessments for learning within vocational education For this project, seven sub-projects were developed, which implemented eassessments for learning activities using a range of pedagogical approaches and digital tools. These e-assessments for learning, supported feedback mechanisms to learners. E-feedback was made accessible to the learners through the affordances provided by digital technologies. For example, e-feedback videos or learning analytics from VR simulators were used to accelerate the learning of skills and dispositions. Learners were able to access e-feedback from a range of supporters including their tutors/teachers, their peers, and other experts. These opportunities for multimodal feedback (through images, audio recordings, VR environments, etc.) provided learners with important information to assist with deliberate practice

Geochronology of the central Tanzania Craton and its southern and eastern orogenic margins

Geological mapping and zircon U-Pb/Hf isotope data from 35 samples from the central Tanzania Craton and surrounding orogenic belts to the south and east allow a revised model of Precambrian crustal evolution of this part of East Africa. The geochronology of two studied segments of the craton shows them to be essentially the same, suggesting that they form a contiguous crustal section dominated by granitoid plutons. The oldest orthogneisses are dated at ca. 2820 Ma (Dodoma Suite) and the youngest alkaline syenite plutons at ca. 2610 Ma (Singida Suite). Plutonism was interrupted by a period of deposition of volcano-sedimentary rocks metamorphosed to greenschist facies, directly dated by a pyroclastic metavolcanic rock which gave an age of ca. 2725 Ma. This is supported by detrital zircons from psammitic metasedimentary rocks, which indicate a maximum depositional age of ca. 2740 Ma, with additional detrital sources 2820 and 2940 Ma. Thus, 200 Ma of episodic magmatism in this part of the Tanzania Craton was punctuated by a period of uplift, exhumation, erosion and clastic sedimentation/volcanism, followed by burial and renewed granitic to syenitic magmatism. In eastern Tanzania (Handeni block), in the heart of the East African Orogen, all the dated orthogneisses and charnockites (apart from those of the overthrust Neoproterozoic granulite nappes), have Neoarchaean protolith ages within a narrow range between 2710 and 2630 Ma, identical to (but more restricted than) the ages of the Singida Suite. They show evidence of Ediacaran "Pan-African" isotopic disturbance, but this is poorly defined. In contrast, granulite samples from the Wami Complex nappe were dated at ca. 605 and ca. 675 Ma, coeval with previous dates of the "Eastern Granulites" of eastern Tanzania and granulite nappes of adjacent NE Mozambique. To the south of the Tanzania Craton, samples of orthogneiss from the northern part of the Lupa area were dated at ca. 2730 Ma and clearly belong to the Tanzania Craton. However, granitoid samples from the southern part of the Lupa "block" have Palaeoproterozoic (Ubendian) intrusive ages of ca. 1920 Ma. Outcrops further south, at the northern tip of Lake Malawi, mark the SE continuation of the Ubendian belt, albeit with slightly younger ages of igneous rocks (ca. 1870-1900 Ma) which provide a link with the Ponte Messuli Complex, along strike to the SE in northern Mozambique. In SW Tanzania, rocks from the Mgazini area gave Ubendian protolith ages of ca. 1980-1800 Ma, but these rocks underwent Late Mesoproterozoic high-grade metamorphism between 1015 and 1040 Ma. One granitoid gave a crystallisation age of ca. 1080 Ma correlating with known Mesoproterozoic crust to the east in SE Tanzania and NE Mozambique. However, while the crust in the Mgazini area was clearly one of original Ubendian age, reworked and intruded by granitoids at ca. 1 Ga, the crust of SE Tanzania is a mixed Mesoproterozoic terrane and a continuation from NE Mozambique. Hence the Mgazini area lies at the edge of the Ubendian belt which was re-worked during the Mesoproterozoic orogen (South Irumide belt), providing a further constraint on the distribution of ca. 1 Ga crust in SE Africa.Hf data from near-concordant analyses of detrital zircons from a sample from the Tanzania Craton lie along a Pb-loss trajectory (Lu/Hf = 0), extending back to ~3.9 Ga. This probably represents the initial depleted mantle extraction event of the cratonic core. Furthermore, the Hf data from all igneous samples, regardless of age, from the entire study area (including the Neoproterozoic granulite nappes) show a shallow evolution trend (Lu/Hf = 0.028) extending back to the same mantle extraction age. This implies the entire Tanzanian crust sampled in this study represents over 3.5 billion years of crustal reworking from a single crustal reservoir and that the innermost core of the Tanzanian Craton that was subsequently reworked was composed of a very depleted, mafic source with a very high Lu/Hf ratio. Our study helps to define the architecture of the Tanzanian Craton and its evolution from a single age-source in the early Eoarchaean