Assessing for Learning Success and Transfer

Assessing learning during a professional learning session is essential for technology coaches to gauge the effectiveness of their presentation and ensure that educators have gained the knowledge and skills needed to integrate new technologies or strategies into their classrooms. By incorporating a variety of assessment methods, coaches can gather valuable feedback and insights into participants' understanding and progress, allowing for adjustments to the session content or delivery as needed.

Summative Activities

One effective summative assessment approach is to have participants create a product or resource related to the session's content that they can immediately implement in their classroom. This hands-on activity demonstrates participants' mastery of the material, encourages practical application, and provides tangible evidence of learning outcomes. For example, if the session focuses on using Google Classroom, a summative assessment could involve teachers creating a sample Google Classroom, complete with assignments and resources, which they can then use as a template for their own classes. Assessing learning throughout the session enables technology coaches to better tailor their presentations to meet the needs of their audience and support the successful implementation of new technologies and strategies in the classroom.

Considered one of the most knowledgeable experts on professional learning, Thomas Guskey notes, “You must clarify the goals you want to achieve and improve student learning before you can judge the value, worth, and appropriateness of any professional learning activity.” Unfortunately, too much professional learning is either not evaluated or done so in a way that doesn’t yield useful data. Attitude and satisfaction data do nothing to determine whether staff have developed new knowledge and skills or whether they have implemented them in their practice, not to mention impacting student outcomes. Guskey is known for describing five levels of evaluation of professional learning, much of which cannot be gathered from a multiple-choice exit survey. Because coaches often provide or support professional learning efforts in their district or buildings, they should be involved in those training opportunities so they can help their staff implement new knowledge and skills with fidelity and collect evidence to monitor their progress. And if student outcomes are the focus of your professional learning efforts, Guskey notes you have to be clear--upfront--about the types of student outcome data you plan to impact and be sure the professional learning is explicitly designed to explain and ultimately collect that data.

Build a PD evaluation tool. Work with a colleague to develop a PD evaluation tool that collects data that is important to you at this time. Apply the questions to Guskey’s five levels and note how your questions are clustered. Apply a tuning protocol (search the term “tuning” after following the link to find multiple protocols) to refine the design. Consider how the tool could evolve over time.

Using data to design PD. Find a collaborative partner(s) to engage in the discovery with you. Use the three-phase Data-Driven Dialogue protocol to uncover assumptions, analyze trends and identify solutions revealed by the data. Apply those suggestions during your next planned PD

Consider one of these ideas to collect evidence of the impact of your professional learning session: Ask teachers to complete this sentence, “I used to think...now I think…” Ask teachers to record a 30-second Flip video response of something they will use tomorrow from the session. Ask teachers to send pictures from their classroom, implementing an idea discussed during the session. Send attendees a Padlet 30 days after the session and ask them to mention a surprise or unintended consequence since the session.  Brainstorm other ideas with colleagues.

Supporting educators in transferring their learning to the classroom is not only a critical component of effective professional development, but it also helps the technology coach continue necessary coaching sessions for those teachers. Technology coaches play an essential role in ensuring that the knowledge and skills gained during training sessions are applied in real-world teaching situations. One way to achieve this is by providing follow-up coaching and support to educators after they've attended professional learning sessions.