In the small private school where I worked, and only recently left, for 5.5 years, assessment was often a major point of discussion for our staff. In the past year or so specifically, incorporating what the Ontario Curriculum calls ‘triangulation of assessment’ received a lot of attention and effort towards implementation. For anyone who isn’t familiar with this, here’s a handy picture:
At first we all groaned at the idea of MORE assessment, but before long we all started to realize how empowering it can be, and how well it can be integrated with technology. Products have now become a tool we all use much more sparingly, and often only after there have been other kinds of formative feedback provided to the students to help them prepare for the summative (graded) assessment.
Observing student interaction or work can obviously be done with a simple checklist, but many of my peers have started to use apps that help them stay organized, as well. Class Dojo (best suited to grades under 9, I would say) and Socrative (great for senior students) are apps that allow teachers to create checklists for certain behaviours, skills, or even content that they are looking for – Google forms will do this too, if a teacher is willing to make one – and then have it be visible for students to check their own progress. Providing students will the criterion with which they will be assessed – or ideally, co-constructing it with them – and not always telling them WHEN to expect such evaluation (or making it clear to them it will happen every day), improved our student attendance greatly. When we were told we could use such evaluations to help inform our professional judgment towards the student’s grade, and the students themselves became aware, they took class-time much more seriously as a whole. As a result many of the conditions for effective assessment as outlined by Gibbs & Simpson (2005) were met, especially numbers 4 – 8. Doing this kind of timely feedback, and putting it online where students can check in on it when they wish, also helps take away the phenomenon of them just ‘studying for the exam’ and cuts down on students being able to get a high grade while being “selectively negligent” (p. 6) of the elements they don’t see as valuable.
Gibbs & Simpson also explain the preference students have for coursework over exams, and how studies show that courses in which there was greater emphasis on coursework students achieved better grades – and it didn’t even need to be ‘marked’ (p. 7-8)! Flipping lessons, where students watch a video or read something content-heavy PRIOR to class and then engage in activities DURING class time that test their understanding, is also made much easier through the use of technology. Hosting the ‘homework’ (e.g. the content) on the class LMS makes it easy for students to access, so that when they arrive in class they can begin to engage with it and the teacher can get a quick idea of who needs what.
The challenges of this kind of integration of technology can certainly be in the learning and designing process for the teacher – in my experience thus far I’ve found students are quite quick to pick up on how to use the various platforms I’ve attempted as long as I’m confident with them. Flipping is a front-loaded type of work, but the lessons can be re-used for future teachings of the course or class, and easily shared between peers. I’m the type of teacher to just jump into trying new technologies or methods, but have learned that scaffolding its implementation is important for many of my teaching colleagues, as it can appear quite intimidating. Just as with students however, when teachers get to the point where they are creating their own content (whether it’s videos or just lessons that USE technology), their enjoyment and understanding becomes authentic. Students have thus far shown a positive attitude towards this kind of technology-based support through assessment, when I’ve had the organization and time to make it come together – but I’ve also been able to benefit from schools with 1:1 device:student ratio. It would take some creativity to figure out how to proceed if a class had a percentage of students without access!
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Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved fromhttp://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf