When in our classrooms we can facilitate a “testing environment,” which traditionally means students are silent, tests are passed out and collected, and teachers supervise the process making little possibility for academic dishonesty.
But we cannot replicate this testing environment through eLearning. We cannot directly supervise students, keep testing materials secure, or ensure students are not accessing people or resources to give them a helping hand.
eLearning changes how we administer assessments, and consequently changes the assessments themselves. Don’t worry – this is a good thing.
First, let’s take a look at how remote learning impacts the testing environment.
Things that WILL Happen During Your At-Home Assessments
There are three main things that will happen during your at-home assessments that impact the way you might want to design and administer tests.
- Collaboration. While at home, students may have more opportunity to work together on tasks. Through texting, social media, and other applications, students may be more prone to utilize one another to help them through their assessments.
- Access to Resources. Students are already utilizing some device – whether a tablet, laptop, or smartphone – to access their assessment. It’s just one easy step to use the same device to access notes, internet sources, or tools that will give them the answer they’re looking for.
- Copying/Sharing. Digital tools help us to more easily screen capture or record content and share it with others. Without a teacher right there in the classroom monitoring students, it may be quite tempting to find a way to capture the testing content and pass it along.
At first glance we might think, “Now I can’t test my students! There’s no way I can give them an assessment with any security or fidelity!” But this is simply not true.
Don’t lament remote learning’s impact on assessment. It won’t do you any good. Instead, embrace it as an opportunity! You’ll find there are now new opportunities and approaches that can give us some extremely meaningful assessment practices.
eLearning doesn’t ruin how we give assessments. It opens new opportunity to explore exciting and meaningful ways to see what students are learning.
Here are Some Approaches to Assessment Teachers Have Been Trying
Assessment helps us answer the question, “How do we know what students have learned?” This is an important question, and we should continue to find ways to answer it while facilitating at-home learning. Let’s look at e-Learning
But beyond that, assessment is not just about how we measure students’ learning; it’s about how well students understand their own learning.
With that in mind, here are some approaches to assessment beyond the traditional in-the-quiet-classroom-timed-test-environment that some teachers are utilizing during remote learning.
- The Zoom Meeting Test. Zoom has dramatically increased in use over the past several weeks as teachers find ways to connect with and instruct their students. Some teachers are attempting to facilitate their tests using Zoom, coming as close as they can to replicating the testing environment. to “watch” students and facilitate testing environment as best as possible.
Here, teachers host their all students at the same live timed session and the teacher can “watch” the students as they take the assessment in their homes. Students can also “share screen” so teacher can see what they have open.
To me this sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. Yes, there are tools out there like Zoom to help us facilitate a live test, see what students have in their screens, and “lock” student devices into an assessment. Still, this tries to replicate a live classroom environment and traditional test. Let’s explore beyond this!
2. The Zoom Meeting Discussion. Zoom is best for in-person interaction. Perhaps you want to assess your students through their live discussion contributions more than their bubble sheet score. Facilitate a meaningful discussion with students about recently learned content. This may work best in smaller groups of students (and one drawback may be students’ varying availability to participate uninterrupted in a discussion).
3. The FlipGrid Video Response. Want to know what a student can do? Have them film their explanation or record themselves actually doing it. Flipgrid is one of many tools students can use to record themselves. Beyond just answering a question on a form, students can articulate their thinking, allowing us to see and hear the extent of their understanding.
4. The Screencast Recording. There are a variety of ways to film a screencast on devices and within specific apps. Instead of students filming themselves, we can watch what students are writing or doing on their screens while they record a verbal explanation of their reasoning.
5. The Google Doc Share. Shareable tools like Google Docs allows students to work while we can “watch” their progress, so to speak. Have students open an original Google Doc and share it with you, and you can tune in to see the progress as they work.
6. The TurnItIn Checker. For longer written assignments, some teachers are having their students submit their work to TurnItIn.com, a website that scans written work for plagiarism. If students would have written something in class or at least under more guidance and oversight from the teacher, it might be worth it to utilize something like this to ensure originality in student writing.
7. The Project/Performance-based Application. Now this is what really gets me excited. The idea of a project or performance assessment is that students don’t just answer a few questions about a subject – they literally DO something that APPLIES the information. With this, students CREATE something original to demonstrate their learning. This can be one final product, or it can be facilitated over time as a process that can be walked through day by day. (For example, you can start students with a question, have them identify resources, give them an original prompt to respond to, generate ideas for a product…and so on).
8. The Scenario-based Questions. Similar to project-based learning, scenario-based questions give students an opportunity to apply the content they’ve acquired in meaningful ways. Teachers, or students themselves, generate true-to-life scenarios where the information they’ve learned has relevance. Students can solve a problem, predict an outcome, take a stand on an issue, or demonstrate a skill.
9. The Quizzez / Kahoot / Education Perfect Review. A wide number of education apps have recently offered premium features for free, including a number of quiz games and review tools that can be engaging for kids to test their skills and compete against one another. These also provide formative feedback to users to identify areas of strength or weakness.
10. The Self-Assessment Reflection. “Self-understanding allows students to evaluate, on a personal level, what they have absorbed and what they may need to revisit to get a better grasp of the learning material.” It’s not just about what teachers know about student growth; it’s about what students know too. Have students engage in self-reflection practices regularly, either writing or filming their answers to questions that target their own assessment of their learning.
Students can assignment themselves a grade, answer questions, ask for feedback in specific areas, or respond to their own goals they’ve set for themselves.
What else could we do to creatively and meaningfully assess students’ learning while our traditional testing environment is inaccessible? These are exciting times that force us to think, “What do I really want my students to be able to do?” and “How can I facilitate a way for students to demonstrate their learning to me and to themselves?”
Perhaps most worthwhile of all is to ask ourselves how this can impact our longer term understanding of the assessments we give. If we find modes of assessment that are genuinely valuable, there’s no reason to relegate them to a strictly eLearning environment.
There are many more unique and worthwhile methods of assessment out there as well! What are you trying with your students that many of us can benefit from? Share with us in a comment below!