Throughout my experience in CEP813, my beliefs about assessment have evolved drastically. The readings in this course paired with the learning experiences inspired me to explore the purposes and challenges of assessment, as well as my assumptions and biases. Looking back, I can see how far my thinking about assessment has come since my post at the start of the course highlighting my original 3 beliefs about assessment:
1. Assessment can be formal and informal
2. Assessment is not easy to get right
3. Assessment must involve creativity
Here are my new and improved 3 beliefs about assessment, including more details and resources to back up my beliefs.
1: Assessments must involve feedback
In this course, I’ve learned time and time again that feedback is an important tool for enhancing assessments. But I’d like to go a step further and assert that I believe feedback is absolutely essential for any successful assessment. Feedback looks different in various contexts, and there are a number of strategies for approaching feedback in assessments. While peer-peer, instructor-peer, and student-instructor feedback are all prolific ways to communicate and further learning, I believe the most important (and most common) form of feedback is instructor-peer. Without descriptive and positive feedback from their teacher, students are left with a grade that simply gives them a surface-level glance at how close they came to meeting the expectations of the assessment.
The works of Lorrie Shepard and Hattie & Timperley helped me understand just how powerful feedback can be when assessing student learning. Using purposeful guiding questions in feedback training, Shepard describes how “more focused feedback” improved student achievement dramatically, and “students developed more positive attitudes” about their subject (2005, p.69). Hattie & Timperley’s three feedback questions stuck with me as well, because they gave purpose to feedback, rather than simply telling a student what they did well, and what they did poorly: “Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?” (2007, p.88). I put these concepts of effective feedback into both my Assessment Design Checklist (see Question 3) and my Formative Assessment Design because I feel strongly that descriptive and positive feedback increases student motivation and self-efficacy, which are both paramount to learning (especially in my professional context).
This Tweet clearly shows that, by the end of Unit 3, I had fallen in love with feedback!
2: Assessments must involve creativity and/or problem solving
In my original blog post, I wrote that “in order for assessment to be meaningful and productive, it must inspire the learner to express themselves creatively”. While I definitely still believe this about assessment, my thinking about the importance of creativity and problem solving has grown more complex throughout this course. One passage from Shepard struck me early on, and inspired my thinking about assessment: “If we wish to pursue seriously the use of assessment for learning… it is important to recognize the pervasive negative effects of accountability tests and the extent to which externally imposed testing programs prevent and drive out thoughtful classroom practices” (2000, p.9). While this statement is meant to reveal the problems of standardized tests, for me it also emphasizes the importance of incorporating creativity and practical problem solving in assessments for a more meaningful and engaging learning experience. Encouraging students to express their learning creatively and inspiring them to use what they’ve learned to solve problems not only makes learning more fun, but allows students to “learn higher order thinking skills or meta-cognitive knowledge and skills that are needed for lifelong learning” (Van den Berghe et al, 2013, p.343).
Creativity and problem solving in assessment also opens the door for the use of digital technologies for more innovative instruction. Bringing educational technology into the picture enables the flipped classroom approach, which allows for more innovative and student-centered instruction (Sams and Bergmann, 2013, p.16), and for the use of games for learning. James Paul Gee’s writing helped me to understand the magic of digital technology and games in bringing creativity and problem solving to learning and assessment: “One key question for deep learning and good education, then, is how to get producer-like learning and knowledge, but in a reflective and critical way” (2015, p.16). I believe that I applied this concept quite well into my Game-Based Assessment in that students had to think outside the box to successfully navigate an interview with a notorious Pirate Captain and his Quartermaster. Using technology to design a game that inspires students to get creative in their thinking about interviewing was not only fun for me, but I’m confident that it would produce meaningful learning about the semiotic domain of interviewing.
Here is a Tweet that sums up my thinking about this belief after creating the Game-Based Assessment:
3: Assessments must evaluate student learning and growth over time
I was surprised to have developed this third belief throughout the course, but now that I’ve reached the end, I realize that this belief is critical for effective and equitable assessment. Measuring learning by having students answer simple multiple-choice questions and memorize and recall meaningless pieces of information causes a lack of motivation and self-efficacy amongst learners, and fails to encourage students to learn from their mistakes and improve their skills. Assessing students based on how far they’ve come with their learning over time not only motivates them to reflect on their growth, but also it rewards them for taking feedback seriously and modifying their approach to improve.
In their discussion of technology and formative assessment, Edys Quellmalz highlights the following: “Research suggests that assessments should be planned to monitor progress along a learning progression, and assessment targets should be clear and communicated to students” (2013, p.10). This passage aligns with my Assessment Design Checklist in that learning goals must be made clear for students, and that measuring their learning over time allows them to continue to work toward these goals even if they make a mistake (or two) along the way. Rather than taking a punitive approach to assessment that deducts points for student errors, this form of assessment encourages students to understand what they missed, and to go back and correct their errors so that the learning goals are then achievable for them. This approach also makes assessment more equitable, according to Richard Milner:
“… assessment and evaluative tools should be expansive and should be used to chart and promote student learning and development over time. This is especially true with respect to students who are often placed at the margin of learning—black and brown students, students whose first language is not English, students who have learning differences, and students who live below the poverty line. Measurement has often been used as means to compare these students to more advantaged students and thus push them even further to the margins, when it should be employed to support their development as diverse human beings” (2018).
This passage really resonated with me because it helped me realize that traditional standardized assessments are inherently biased and are clearly detrimental to marginalized student populations. In measuring student learning based on their growth over time, assessments transform from high-stakes, competitive tools to more constructive, motivating instruments. This belief comes to life in my Formative Assessment Design in that students are encouraged to continue practicing and improving on their skills, and are evaluated based on their learning, growth, and improvement over time. Instructor and peer feedback encourages them to reflect on their work, and future assignments encourage them to build on what they’ve learned and continue to improve their interviewing skills.
Conclusion
While I don’t think that my initial beliefs about assessment were wildly inaccurate or uninformed, I can definitely see now how far my thinking has come throughout this CEP813 course. My mind has been opened to the power of feedback in assessment, the importance of creativity and problem solving with technology, and creating equitable assessments that measure student learning over time. I’ve enjoyed demonstrating my beliefs about assessment creatively through my posts and creations!
References
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.
Milner, H.R. (2018). Confronting inequity / assessment for equity. Educational Leadership, 75(5), 88-89. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb18/vol75/num05/Assessment-for-Equity.aspx
Quellmalz, E.S. (2013). Technology to support next-generation classroom formative assessment for learning. San Francisco, CA: WestEd.
Sams, A., & Bergmann, J. (2013). Flip your students’ learning. Educational Leadership, 70(6), 16-20.
Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.
Shepard, L. (2005). Linking formative assessment to scaffolding. Educational Leadership, 63(3), 66-70.
Van den Berghe, L., Ros, A., & Beijaard, D. (2013). Teacher feedback during active learning: Current practices in primary schools. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 341-362.
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