Objectives

• To become familiar with various types and purposes of assessments, including baseline, formative, and summative

• To learn to implement collaborative and student-created assessments

• To learn to implement both physical and internet-based formats for exhibition and Presentations of Learning, and its importance in fostering a sense of motivation, purpose, and understanding of your teaching by students, parents, and the wider community.

Classroom Assessment and Reflection

A- Teacher uses multiple methods to systematically gather data about student understanding and ability.

B- Teacher uses student work/data, observations of instruction, assignments and interactions with colleagues to reflect on and improve teaching practice.

C- Teacher revises instructional strategies based upon student achievement data.

D- Teacher uncovers students’ prior understanding of the concepts to be addressed and addresses students’ misconceptions/incomplete conceptions. The teacher: 1) uncovers students’ prior conceptions about the concepts to be addressed and addresses students’ misconceptions/incomplete conceptions regarding the natural and physical world.

E- Teacher co-develops scoring guides/rubrics with students and provides adequate modeling to make clear the expectations for quality performance.

F- Teacher guides students to apply rubrics to assess their performance and identify improvement strategies.

G- Teacher provides regular and timely feedback to students and parents that moves learners forward.

H- Teacher allows students to use feedback to improve their work before a grade is assigned.

I- Teacher facilitates students in self- and peer-assessment.

J- Teacher reflects on instruction and makes adjustments as student learning occurs.

Readings: Using Student-Created Assessments in Science

EdWeek: What happens When Students Design Their Own Assessmentshttps://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/05/24/what-happens-when-students-design-their-own.html

NEA- Students Creating Test Questions http://www.nea.org//tools/tips/Students-Creating-Test-Questions.html

The Student-Developed Quizhttps://www.nactateachers.org/images/The_Student-Developed_Quiz_or_Exam-__Scaffolding_Higher-Order_Thinking.pdf

Edutopia: Bringing Student-Choice Assessment to Science Classeshttps://www.edutopia.org/article/bringing-student-choice-assessment-science-classes

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Practical Applications for Course/Curriculum Designers

• Create frequent and varied active learning exercises — focus less on content that students consume through reading and watching, and more on doing. Active learning in online courses, though more challenging to create, supports effective and dynamic learning experiences (Austin & Mescia, n.d.).

• Use quizzes as exploratory, reflective learning exercises with the primary purpose to help students learn. This means creating quizzes that provide immediate feedback, even during the quiz, where students can check their answers. In order for this to be effective the feedback needs to be specific, describing why an answer is correct or incorrect. The feedback is an opportunity to reinforce concepts and can prompt students to dig deeper into a subject area. If using the quiz feature in a LMS, it’s possible to provide customized feedback, even include Web links to further resources.

• Incorporate concepts frequently throughout the course in a variety of contexts by creating learning exercises and assignments that require students to draw upon concepts from previous modules/units of learning. Do not approach learning modules or units as independent ‘chunks’ of learning, but fluid and porous ‘blocks’ that draw upon previous concepts that interlock and build a structure. It’s a common term in online course development to ‘chunk’ learning into segments, yet it’s critical to thread concepts consistently throughout the modules/units.

• Don’t make it too easy — make students work at learning, e.g. by posing more questions and opportunities for discovery through discussion and interaction with other students. Though structure and outline of purpose for activities is the framework, students need to find solutions and solve problems wrestling with concepts and ideas. This last component is perhaps the most challenging to structure within an online course.

Edutopia- PBL Assessmentshttps://www.edutopia.org/pbl-assessment-resources

In-class activity: Creating and assessment using Google Forms

Collaborative Assessment

In the professional scientific and academic world, collaboration is not only permitted by encouraged. Why should the K-12 world be any different?

A major goal of any classroom science teacher should be the encouragement of 'science talk'- i.e., students actively and on their own initiative discussing content with each other.

One way of encouraging such talk is to use collaborative assessments. These can be traditional summative assessments, but administered in groups of 4 or 5.

To ensure that these types of discussions touch on concepts rather than simply saying 'what did you get for #5?' the teach can use software that generates exams with the questions randomized.

Pearson Education Test Gen Software
https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/products-services-teaching/test-prep-testing-solutions/testgen.html

Classmarker.com
https://www.classmarker.com/online-testing/blog/Creating-Randomized-Quiz-Questions

Easy Test Maker
https://www.easytestmaker.com/

Other Quiz Software-Top 10 Quiz Makers
https://www.digitalchalk.com/resources/blog/elearning-tools/top-10-quiz-makers-teachers-educators

Summative Assessment

NGSS Summative Assessment Tips for Science Teachers
https://www.hmhco.com/blog/ngss-summative-assessments-tips-for-science-teachers#

MCAS Sample Standardized Tests
http://mcas.pearsonsupport.com/student/practice-tests-science/

Scaffolding in Project-Based Learning

While a principal aim of project-based learning is to put students in charge of their learning, the shift from teacher-directed learning to student-directed learning does generally not happen all at once, either generally or in a specific course.

Projects should start out highly structured, with clear instructions and deliverables, then gradually shift to being more student-directed. Unlimited freedom in a project is often more paralyzing than liberating. "Only in fetters is liberty- without its banks a river could not be".