If Someone asked, “How can I know what I don’t know?”.  How would you response to this?  

Life-long learning skill is not something new to the world.  The university students will face the rapidly changing world after they graduate. Therefore, it is unquestionable that preparing students to have this skill becomes an important function of university education. 

Hence, you may ask, “why should we assess lifelong learning, and how it can be done?” and than ask “Who is the one to assess, the students themselves or the teachers?” … it will be an endless discussion.

However, it is widely noted that to equip students with the attitude and skill for life-long learning, the use of assessment can be a very powerful tool for them.  Design of curriculum and assessment component could communicate explicitly to students about the acquisition of the specific attitude and skill needed.  One of the good examples is doing research, which is well cited as a useful model in educating life-long learning.  The process of doing this assessment brings out the main characteristics of a life-long learner.  Another useful way is doing portfolio which enables the learners to get on the way to self-directed learning.

Furthermore, a study on the topic has identified several techniques in particular that help teachers to promote greater learning power in their classrooms:

1. creating healthy learning relationships
2. holding dialogues about learning
3. being a learning role model
4. reflecting on the learning process
5. assessing for learning
6. providing challenge and choice
7. creating a stimulating learning environment.

[source from findings of the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) Project funded by the Lifelong Learning Foundation.]

What concern you most among the above techniques?  Could these techniques be embedded in the use of assessment?  In the opposite, can we foster life-long learning by abandon use of some assessment focusing on robot learning?

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