Regardless of whether I assigned a 'mark' or not, I still had to assess and evaluate students.
Definitions:
To be clear, in our system, assessment includes everything students do to get ready to show their learning. It is also known as assessment as learning. Using a sports analogy it is the practice phase of development. It is guided by teacher feedback. Mistakes are celebrated as learning opportunities and, as such, don't usually influence a final mark. Homework, quizzes, conversations, and the like are all examples. Evaluation is the demonstration of learning by the student, or assessment of learning. Back to the sports analogy, this is the game. Evaluations contribute to the formation of a final grade (which I still need to provide).
In my experience the two are not as discrete as the binary nature of their naming suggest as assessment will often happen while a student works on an evaluation much the same way that a coach provides in-game feedback.
What is being assessed/evaluated?
In my 'normal' teaching I will use the curriculum expectations (from the Ministry) to inform what topics I am going to teach. From there I design (an) evaluation(s) (if I'm super-prepared) then figure out how I'm going to get my students to be successful. More often, I don't use backwards design; I plan a unit broadly, start teaching, make adjustments as students require, and then build evaluations with my students to showcase their learning.
Typically, I will (with student input) then assign 'marks' to the evaluations according to KICA - Knowledge, Inquiry/Thinking, Communication, and Application.
In all honesty, this is where I now have a problem. My assignment of marks, and balancing of marks, is done evaluation to evaluation. I don't have the time, drive, or broad perspective to balance my KICA marks against the weightings assigned by my board. Am I evaluating something too much, too little? What happens when a student does well on most of an evaluation, but bombs one of the KICA bits? I long ago stopped putting overall marks on evaluations since those are not true reflections of student achievement when the entirety of a course is considered.
It seems to me there is a conflict between KICA and the overall and specific expectations outlined in course descriptions. KICA is left as a judgement call for the teacher. Expectations are pretty clear. [I admit it has been a long time since I read the front part of a curriculum document (future PD for me) which discusses how the Ministry intends the two to interact] KICA, in my eyes, has been a band-aid placed by the Ministry to ensure teachers balance their courses, so they are not all recall memory based. While I applaud that, I still don't understand why KICA is needed when we follow the expectations. If you know, please email me!
So, for Markless, I have 'abandoned' KICA. I break everything down by expectation. I communicate what we are doing in terms of the expectation. I record performance for each expectation. No KICA.
At midterm I had to generate a mark. What I did is not the best solution, but is the best I could come up with in short notice with the support of my admin - I arbitrarily assigned expectations to KICA, since our marking software inputs marks according to KICA category and not expectation. So expectation 1.1 would be Knowledge, 1.2 would be Thinking, etc. Not perfect, but it worked well enough as the student's marks all fell within the ballpark I got when looking at their data by expectation. Future goal: to go through the document, consider each expectation, and assign a KICA category to it, and see how the whole course matches my Board's distribution. I should also consider how some expectations can fall into more than one KICA category.
What Do Assessments/Evaluations Look like?
As we progressed through the course this changed for me for two reasons. At first we progressed as a standard Science class (I'm not ready for Spiralling). We would do course work, then a few assignments and a test. I felt really good about these - they were easy to make since I would do one or two questions per expectation, and student success was pretty high. Since I was using the expectations the amount of rote recall was reduced and student got to show me what they were capable of on their terms. Towards the end we were running out of time! I find this pretty normal for Applied at my school. Much time is taken making sure students are ready (that assessment piece at work) so evaluations are delayed.
The final two units (Electricity and Astronomy) were jammed together in an epic voyage to find another habitable planet (setting up for our Performance Task, lifted largely from the Academic course). Our Theme was chosen, and my job was to give students the content in that context, while ensuring curriculum expectations were met. As a course development tool, the theme was invaluable. It also led me to toss formal evaluations out (maybe with the bathwater). Students had tasks to complete. I checked and tracked their progress. If students stumbled, I would jump in, discuss, and allow them to change their work based on our conversation. I would evaluate their completed work as an evaluation.
I think the key to this is both philosophical and stylistic. Philosophically, if a student shows me understanding, then they understand. If they can discuss their level of understanding, with my professional understanding to help parse it, then they got it at whatever level they are at. If that is the case, why do I need a formal evaluation? Stylistically this worked for me because we were building up to our theme. A formal evaluation at this point would be artificial and not 'authentic'.
Learning Skills
I continue to evaluate Learning Skills with our Board standard, which is to say, there is no standard. I do mine informally and highly dependent on my professional judgement. A future goal is to make it more formal while maintaining ease and authenticity. This will likely be incorporated by looking at my evaluations and determining which learning skills each evaluation highlights.
This method flies in the face of my pedagogy, and needs to be addressed. As an intermediate teacher (I really only teach 9's & 10's) the final mark is much less important as how students achieved that mark. Some kids ease into an 85%, but could do more. Some work their tails off for a 70%, and should be lauded for their achievement.
This is where I really like the possibility for Markless. It opens the door for celebrating student success based on their ability as a student. I think we need to contextualize our courses as part of a continuum of student learning and growth. If a student eases through my course they just wasted both our times. They likely will not remember the details of the course as these are supplanted by more relevant and important details to the student's experience. What is important is how the student has developed, as a learner, in my course to prepare them for future stages of learning and academic growth.
I embraced Markless as a way to get away from two problems. The first is students who struggle who shut down after failing to meet their definition of success (which, in my building, for these students, is often their parents' definition of success). The second is the ambivalence of some students who don't desire greater levels of success after achieving their (or their parents') goal, "I need an 80%. My parents said they will buy me a new phone if I get it." Without marks it is all about how students are progressing. If a student is progressing they should have learning skills that reflect that. My job is to find a way to accurately show students how their learning skills will lead to academic goals and future success. Tougher than it sounds! I need much more work on that front.