In many jurisdictions, British Columbia in particular, there has been a shift in K-12 assessment towards proficiency-based assessment and reporting. This has required teaching staff to change not only the manner in which they teach, but also the manner in which they assess. Rubrics that reference the learning standards (core competencies and curricular competencies) are an effective method to generate assessment data, but it has been my experience that this corresponds to a dramatic increase in the volume of data that needs to be collected and tracked in some manner.
Advances in the ability of mobile devices to capture and recognize both paper-based typed and paper-based handwritten information, and the ability of mobile spreadsheet apps to import data from images directly into the spreadsheets are becoming more and more reliable and stable. A convergence of these two technologies could enable teaching staff, and staff in other sectors, to streamline and improve the efficiency of inputing increasing amounts of date into spreadsheets or databases to allow evidence-based assessment and reporting using a rapidly-increasing amount of data.
This video explains the possibilities in more detail.
I struggle with assessment data as it continues to be my be-all-end-all goal in order to verify my efficacy as a teacher, and the manner in which I am able to determine how well students improve in their learning at school.
Teaching the International Primary Curriculum at a private school in Shanghai, I am blessed with the opportunity to take these autonomous choices towards assessing students, varying the ways I assess knowledge, using rubrics to determine skill improvement, and tracking outcomes over long periods of time. I have constantly strived to aim towards using holistic methods towards assessing outcomes, but the ever mounting pressure to conform to local government regulations that continue to push using traditional assessment methods of singular questions seem to squander my efforts to building self-efficacy in students when the assessments fail to truly capture all their learning.
Just as a paper test cannot assess the cohesion that I have strived to build in my classroom communities, I continue to realize that to improve, we end up having to do more than the average individual. But what exactly quantifies as ‘more’ or ‘better’ is challenging to determine, and my subjective biases that I’m bound to make it such that the contradiction of striving towards objective improvement seems unavoidable and somewhat futile at times.
This might be a reason why I often see technology as the saving grace of being able to do the computation power at a rate faster than humans, and is a tool that individuals need to recognize will always be a tool, as still humans are arguably the only ones who can build and derive meaning from the data.
I’ve worked in International Baccalaureate programs, and the assessment framework there is also quite involved. While there are applications that assist with the record keeping (ManageBac being the go to for IB schools it seems), there is still the issue of collecting and assessing. Scanning to have a simplified process, possibly with some AI assistance (recognizing completely correct answers but sending ambiguous ones for human grading, providing feedback on spelling/grammar, etc.) would be great. Also, have a way to easily archive evidence of achievement would be useful: for parent meetings, looking at trends in student work, etc. This is easier with major assessments that are submitted electronically, but being able to easily input paper or photo based material, especially for lower stakes assessments is an area of opportunity.
I admit that as a teacher I absolutely despise marking, so I face the dilemma of balancing assessments to keep the class engaging and my workload reasonable, while gathering evidence of progress and providing good feedback to students. Tools that could allow more assessment without the normal trade offs seem like something that modern technology can greatly assist with.
Where I work we face a challenge with students submitting mathematical equations as responses to online questions. Students aren’t inclined to learn whatever LaTeX or other system the technology uses to decipher math, and so a solution has been for students to scan their answers and submit them as images or PDFs. It’d be great to have an app (like the one described here) that could do the conversion on the fly, and perhaps even grade the student submissions without the need for instructors to check each and every one.
Hi Allan,
Thank you for a great presentation! Your video was really well done, and this is such a relevant subject particularly for me right now. I have been lucky in my teaching career until recently in that I haven’t had to compile/manipulate most of my grades on my own. I usually hand my grades over to a Japanese teacher who then inputs and sometimes adjusts them to make sure they are entered properly in the Japanese JHS school system. I have always been very grateful for this system as I am terrible with numbers and have self-diagnosed dyscalculia (sometimes my daughters 1st grade maths HW intimidates me!) However, I have recently moved to the university level teaching and my assessment security blanket has been pulled away from me. From now, I will have to do all of my own assessments and I am literally shaking in my boots! I have also been instructed to grade on a bell-curve which I find extremely intimidating and I am dreaming of an app such as the one you have forecasted to help some someone like me manage complex assessment. I really do hope that this technology comes to fruition someday!! Great work here 🙂
This topic is definitely worthy of attention
Allan,
What a great idea! I would love to have anything that would make assessment and data entry easier. You have made a compelling video, with clearly outlined problems and provided a possible solution for easing the workload for teachers. I have to agree with Jamie’s one downfall – nothing like this is currently available!!
Thank you.
Allan, I was surprised to see you referencing Excel Spreadsheets for tracking this data. My personal experiences with Moodle and Teams in support of classroom learning have shown me the value in leveraging their grading and rubric systems even with assignments that were not submitted electronically. I hate having to duplicate my effort, and I find that by setting up my grading in Moodle allows me to more easily track all of the assessment points with the ability to provide student feedback in the same place. In the past, tracking this data (including student feedback) through Excel was my preferred method. This was rather limited in the detail of rubrics, the tracking of outcomes and options for feedback (which can be accomplished through mail merge.) In addition, it required quite a bit of time and effort to ensure that it is setup and functioning correctly.
The final, frustrating component is the preference of school divisions to use one system for grading and reporting. Inevitably, the system chosen works very well for printing report cards and collecting data, but not grading or providing student feedback. This results in a duplication of effort that would be best avoided. Even options to import assignments could reduce the workload for teachers, yet are often options that are given very low priority. The current system where I teach often leads teachers to choose between tracking their data in the reporting system or tracking their data in the learning management system, and sacrificing the strengths of the other.
Hello,
I think that you’ve come up with a great idea for educators and I like that it would use forms of technology that already exist in other applications. I have long been using PDF scanners to scan general paperwork, but had never considered how nice it would be if I could just scan the pages from my mark book and have them directly entered into a spreadsheet. It would also be great if this forecasted tech automatically picked up averages of various kinds (class average, subject averages, student averages). I’m sure there’s a myriad of other great features that could be a part of this idea, depending on its various uses (the ability to export marks and comments directly to various report card writing software is another that comes to mind).
Your presentation is clear and concise, and quite easy to follow. The only downside to this presentation is that I unfortunately cannot use the forecasted technology that you’ve presented! Great job on this presentation!