Objective Assessments of Student Learning

Blog 4 - Module 8

“I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.” —President Barack Obama, Address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 10, 2009

(Office of Education Technology, n.d.)

Demonstration of knowledge does not just include summative assessments of testing or quizzing but can include portfolio and performance-based assessments as well. Projects, portfolios, reports, videos, and performance are great ways for students to showcase their understanding not just with summative test and quizzes. These alternatives allow students to use creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills that they can relate to real world problems and of interest to the student.

Assessments are a great fit for technology in the classroom. With more classrooms having student devices, access to Internet, and applications that assist teachers in delivery and scoring of assessments they can be a vital tool in the classroom to conduct assessments. Teachers now have greater access to data from these tools to better understand their students understanding of lesson content. 

The following are several types of assessments and technologies that align with them:

Formative Assessments are a great way to check for understanding and can guide instruction revisions to better match students learning styles. These assessments can include multiple choice, true false, open-ended, show work and drawing, and polling. Many times they are not graded but a check on where students are at with understanding during or after a lesson.

Formative https://goformative.com  

Formative is an easy to use and visually pleasing online tool for creating CFU, Exit Tickets, short answer, multiple choice, and show your work annotating activities. All answers come back to the teacher in real time and teachers can give quick feedback. Documents and PDF can be imported for creating formative assessments with existing materials.

• Easy way to go paperless with current assignments
• Create assessments with the tool or upload a PDF or Word document to build a formative assessment quiz
• Assessments can be shared with web link or embed code on other platforms

Diagnostic Assessments are important to find out what current knowledge students have to build upon or match up with in delivery of lesson content. These assessments are helpful in differentiated learning to meet students on their current level.

Popplet  http://popplet.com 

With Popplet students can mind map and visually showcase what they currently understand and know about a topic for teachers to review. The tool lets students map text and images quickly. Popplets can be shared and allow collaboration on the same mind maps.

• Visual representation of current understanding of topics can be created with the tool
• Mind mapping tool allows adding text, images, and videos.
• Sharing and collaboration is easy

Summative Assessments are the tradition test and quizzing to gauge student understanding. These assessments can serve as a standardized way of gathering data on how well students are doing but do not represent all aspects that students may have for learning and showcasing understanding of lesson topics. These assessments are usually graded.

Socrative  www.socrative.com 

Socrative can be used for formative and summative assessments. With the tool teachers can create quizzes and tests that are graded. Question types include multiple choice, true and false, and short answer.

• Real-time data on student quizzes
• Downloadable reports and shareable quizzes
• Accessible on web, iOS, and Android

Portfolio Assessments allows for students’ reflection. They can showcase assignments or projects students have completed. The portfolio is easy to share with teachers, students, parents, or perspective colleges and employers. Rubrics are important aspect to these assessments as they give the teacher a standard guide to grade and allow students to understand what criteria they will need to include in their performance-based assessments.

Seesaw http://web.seesaw.me  

Seesaw makes it easy to create and let students share their work in a digital portfolio that can be shared with parents as well. Teachers can approve projects and comment on them in the student portfolio. Students may show videos, images, text, drawings, and voice recordings. Students have a place to reflect on their own work.

• Teachers have moderating controls what projects can be shown in a student portfolio
• View whole-class or individual student work easily in the teacher dashboard
• Free account for teacher, student, and parent to see student work in the current school year

Schoology Portfolios www.schoology.com   

In the Enterprise version of Schoology is included student portfolio feature. It is located in the personal profile in Schoology and assignments students submit they can also add to this portfolio or students can add unique work as well that is not part of an assignment. Students can showcase Schoology assignments, images, videos, audio, web links, and documents. Students can create different portfolios for different categories. 

• Viewers of the portfolio do not need a Schoology account
• Easy for students to add any assignment they have completed to their portfolio
• Portfolio can be shared with a web link

Performance-based Assessments allow students to create demonstrations showcasing understanding. With performance-based assessments teachers and students can explore more open ended questions with the students of their assessment. Rubrics are important aspect to these assessments as they give the teacher a standard guide to grade and allow students to understand what criteria they will need to include in their performance-based assessments.

Adobe Spark http://spark.adobe.com  

Adobe Spark is free and one can log in with an email address, Google Account, or Adobe ID account. All creations are saved to the tool online under your account and they can be shared with a URL, social media, or downloaded. Adobe Spark consist of Spark Post to create graphics, Spark Video to create animated storytelling videos, and Spark Page that can utilize both Spark Post and Video for creating a web story that can include text, images, and web links as well. You can upload images from Google Photos, Dropbox, or Adobe Creative Cloud and Lightroom. Videos can be embedded from YouTube, Vimeo and Spark Video.

• Students can show what they know in storytelling video, images, web links, and textual information
• Creates professional looking graphics, video, and web pages

Adaptive Assessments adapt with the student understanding with each question to better match student understanding. These are great for differentiated instruction as they can change questions based on the student skill level. Questions can adapt to challenge the student or complement current student understanding for asking questions.

Knewton  www.knewton.com 

Knewton is a free tool to use premade or create your own  adaptive assessments that help students meet their learning goals. Knewton allows for every student to be supported and challenged. You can sign in with email address or Google Account. Focuses on Math, ELA, and Biology lesson content.

• Personalizes the content based on what the student knows and how they learn
• With each question it adapts to the student
• Easy to use with visually nice design.
• Profiles for teacher or creator and student or learner

References 

Office of Education Technology. (n.d.). Future of assessment [Online image]. Retrieved from http://tech.ed.gov/netp/assessment