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Assessment to Inform Teaching and Learning
Introduction
Introduction
Effective teaching relies on knowing what your learners know. The more we can test it, the more we can adjust to ensure that real learning is happening.
Far too often feedback only happens when it's already too late. We assess only when we're done teaching and only then find out when a learner is behind. By time we've quite possible moved on already; learners subsequently build on a faulty understanding. With curriculum pressures, there's no more time to go back.
Teachers and learners have to get feedback of learning as regularly as possible. Effective ICT integration can play a massive role in this regards. Digital Assessment is more timely and personalised, guiding instruction and learning more effectively.
Assessment Types
Assessment Types
Formative Assessment
Formative Assessment
Formative assessments provide students ongoing feedback during instruction. It helps them monitor their progress and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Teachers benefit as well as this identifies gaps in knowledge.
Summative Assessment
Summative Assessment
The goal of a summative assessment is to measure student learning at the end of an instructional unit or module. Summative assessments are used to determine if the student mastered the content objectives.
ICT integration in Formative Assessment
Complete a Kahoot at the start of a lesson to determine baseline knowledge.
Complete a Quizizz for homework.
Make use of a web forum as discussion board for what has been learnt.
ICT integration in Summative Assessment
Complete the multiple-choice component of an exam online. / Complete a multiple-choice-only exam.
Record videos/audio in place of prepared orals.
Write essays on online platforms, which allows for the addition of hyperlinks for citation etc.
Feedback
Feedback
What is effective Feedback?
What is effective Feedback?
Feedback is a crucial component of effective assessment. Feedback ensures that learners are able to develop and learn from their mistakes. Therefore effective feedback must adhere to the following:
Timely: Students cannot learn, change, and develop if they only receive feedback at the conclusion of a unit.
Enabling: Students must learn from the feedback and use it to improve content knowledge and application.
Personalised: Feedback should be personalised and constructive based on each student’s performance.
How does ICT support Feedback?
How does ICT support Feedback?
Timely:
Timely:
ICT allows for immediate feedback (depending on the type of assessment). This negates the problem of a teacher having to sit up all hours of the night with a red pen, trying to mark.
Formal assessments, involving teacher grading is also made easier and faster when able to assess assignments that have been completed digitally.
Enabling:
Enabling:
Depending on the assessment, learners can revisit the assessment and the feedback, sometimes with the opportunity to redo it in order to determine whether they have improved.
Feedback could also be revisited at a later stage in preparation for further types of assessment.
Personalised:
Personalised:
ICT allows for greater personalised feedback on assessment, whether automated or not.
Typing or even adding a voice note can be much faster and allow for more detailed, personalised feedback.
Many automatically graded assessments can be set to respond in certain ways depending on the answers.
The Feedback Loop
The Feedback Loop
The Traditional Approach (teacher-centred)
The Traditional Approach (teacher-centred)
Traditionally teachers deliver content knowledge in a classroom environment. Understanding is then tested through completion of homework. The teacher, time-permitting, can then go through the answers with the learners. This could determine whether the teacher needs to spend more time on the work or could move on.
The Digital Approach (learner-centred)
The Digital Approach (learner-centred)
A learner engages with digital content and then completes an assessment of his/her understanding of the content. They could then assess their understanding and decide whether they can engage with more digital content to further their knowledge.
Blended Approach
Blended Approach
Ideally content knowledge should still be taught by a teacher in a classroom environment. ICT can be integrated to inform both the teacher and learner to determine if learning has happened in the form of the formative assessment. The teacher can use this to inform the teaching approach, while the learner also determines whether they should engage with supplementary digital content.
Digital Tools for Assessment
Digital Tools for Assessment
There's a seemingly endless supply of digital tools out there to support digital assessment, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. In order to implement a tool as part of effective teaching you have to know exactly what you plan to use the tool for. Effective use of these tools cannot simply hinge on the idea that learners enjoy it and are more engaged.
Here are some questions to ask when deciding which tool to use:
Here are some questions to ask when deciding which tool to use:
Ease of access: Is the tool easy to use, either for me and/or the learners?
Feedback: Is the tool meant to inform the teacher/student and does it provide adequate feedback?
Implementation: Is the tool meant to be used inside as a teaching tool or an assessment tool?
Engagement: Will the tool engage learners and enable better understanding?
These are just a few tools that we can recommend, but this is by no means a complete list. There are many digital tools, each with different applications, strengths and weaknesses. The following list will get you going with digital assessment, the rest you need to discover for yourself.
Google Forms/Quiz
Google Forms/Quiz
Forms is the most widely used digital data collection tool.
The Quiz feature has been built into Google Forms, enabling an answer key which allows automatic grading.
There are hundreds of plugins to add to Google Forms that will allow you to create the learner experience that you want.
It integrates into the Google environment very well and when combined with Google Classroom becomes a robust and powerful tool for assessment.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom
While Google Classroom started off primarily as a communication and content distribution tool, it has evolved and incorporated a number of assessment tools.
There are two key assessment tools built in now: Quiz Assignment and Assignment. These tools allow you to collect learner responses and provide feedback on those responses.
It has a bit more of a learning curve, but it will become a go-to for both Formative and Summative assessments.
Quizizz
Quizizz
This is another digital quiz tool. It has been designed to engage students in a fun, game-like manner.
The great advantage of Quizizz is the ability to import questions from sets that have already been made. This gives you access to an enormous question bank to create your own quiz on the fly.
Quizlet
Quizlet
This tool builds on the idea of learning through Flash Cards, ideal for consolidation of terminology and key concepts.
You develop a set of flash cards, (terms + explanations) which are then used in various ways to enhance learning. All flash cards start off as just a simple set of flashcards, which can then be transformed into quizzes and finally could be transformed into a complete test based on the flash cards..
Gimkit
Gimkit
At its core, Gimkit is a quizzing tool, but what it does is wrap the quiz in various engaging game modes. The basic mode allows learners to spend the points ($) that they get on various upgrades and powerups. What's good about it, is that the focus is on accuracy and not on speed.
It's really easy to set up as you've got access to a vast bank of created quizzes. You can copy and edit a whole quiz or just import selected questions. You can even have learners add suggested questions.
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