Ruminations on Assessment as Learning

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As I wrap up my Beyond Letter Grades experience, my last badge effort involves contemplating assessment as learning, which I must confess is a bit of a slippery subject. It overlaps so much with terms like assessment for learning and assessment of learning that it is pretty easy for them to start blending together. Honestly, I am not sure that I see enough difference between as and for to make a significant case for them being separated.

Modifying Portfolio Assessment

For years I have employed a writing portfolio as the single most important task of my classes. As I have changed schools, schedules, and students, it is one thing that has remained in place as part of my practice. In this sense it is less a lesson and more an assessment. However, it has remained a fairly foreign concept to most of my students and requires definite preparation, which takes the form of a series of short lessons. It is always a bit onerous to tackle in a single one.

On a superficial level I modify the portfolio requirements all the time depending on what the students have accomplished over the course of the semester. Unfortunately, the school where I now teach uses a semester-based system, which means that there is some minor potential turnover of students at the break every year.

Semester vs. Year

Consequently, I ask for a portfolio at the end of each semester, although I feel like the results were better when I have worked with a year-long schedule. With a year-long portfolio, there is a much longer developmental arc and the thread of learning can be more consistent over that time.

For me, as well as my observation of students, semesters tend to truncate the natural flow of the school year, compressing desired outcomes into even more tightly bound boxes, which may or not be reasonable for some students. By the time a high school student has adapted and begun making deep progress the semester is over and a new one begun. I have always felt that it takes most students about two-thirds to three-quarters of the year to be operating at their peak level. Shortly after that is the sweet spot, where I have always looked to get the best assessment of learning. Prior to that it is all about feedback loops and improvement.

Nevertheless, I use a semester portfolio, which includes a reflection on the selections and the process of creating them, which I wrote about for the self assessment module. Yet, I have always felt that this task needs more scaffolding to better reach students at a variety of different ages, levels, and abilities. This unit, in conjunction with a handful of others, got me thinking about how to do just that. I think the answer may be through a lens of assessment as learning, a series of scaffolded student experiences.

Adjusting the Assessment Lens

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In essence Beyond Letter Grades has already sparked this change. Building on the work from the self assessment badge, I will ask students to engage in a series of self assessments that will grow in depth and complexity.

Beginning with a closer self assessment of the main “summative” task in the narrative unit students are completing, students will get the first formal formative self assessment experience. While I explained this particular plan in greater detail, here is the quick summary. Students have two drafts of a long narrative they have composed, one completed before and one completed after a round with a peer response group. The amount of feedback each student receives varies, but all groups include three students.

Considering the limits of time and peer feedback the differences between the two drafts will be somewhat limited. This means that the changes are likely to be limited as well, and thus easier to identify and explain why they were made. Students also were given a rubric by which the narrative will be assessed to use as an additional reason for making changes. I will ask students to highlight the changes between the two drafts and explain what prompted the revisions and why they were made. Previously I was only contemplating this move. Now I am committed to it. This should be take about half a class session.

Additionally, within a couple of days of this first experience, I will present students with both a pre-test and post-test narrative assessment and ask them to identify the changes they can observe between the two pieces. This is a more complex task given the length of time between the two compositions and the number of potential technical areas growth. Also, there is no group feedback for this task. However, a rubric will again assist the identification of changes. Similarly, student will be asked to identify what has changed and improved, as well as what they believe the reasons are for the changes. My hope is that this experience will not require a full class session but it certainly could.

As I transition students to a more expository writing focus, I will repeat a similar comparative methodology. Having saved a brief expository sample from each student a couple of weeks ago, I will return it to students and ask them to assess their own sample using a specific criteria. I will then give them another copy of the sample assessed by me using the same criteria. Again, students will be asked to compare the pieces, identifying the differences. This task’s complexity will increase is by having students then rewrite the sample, as well as document why they made certain changes. This is probably a full class worth of work.

These three formative experiences should be preparatory for the kind of self assessment I am hoping to see when they assemble and submit their portfolio of revised pieces they have selected to best show their learning. I suspect that there may be a one two more experiences along the way that will assist, but I will have to wait and see what emerges from looking at student work through this new lens.

Additionally, I have to remain sensitive to the students needs and progress. While I want them to have a few reps of self assessment in hopes of building a deeper more reflective disposition, I do not want to fatigue them on the concept. If I cannot find ways to increase the complexity of the task or reflection I probably need not add another rep.

Concluding Thoughts

As I see it, the key to cultivating assessment as learning is framing activities in the course around different types of formative and summative feedback, being prepared to transform any summative assessment to a formative one when needed, and scaffolding self assessment in such a way that students gain a deeper capacity for reflecting on their own work and processes.

More than anything, reading the excerpt from Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind and ruminating on how to apply some of the principles has lead me to believe assessment as learning may be more about creating a cultural disposition in class. One that both encourages and honors student’s monitoring, assessing, and ultimately evaluating there own performance. It has to become a habit of mind of regular practice for it to really be successfully realized.

Assessment: From Formative to Summative & Back Again

A Beaker of Summative, A Beaker of Formative
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I admit that I am a fan of what I only know to call a meta-lesson, when content or concept reflects back on itself and the experience is more than a representation or illustration but is the lesson.

One of my favorite examples of this kind of thing is Francis Christensen’s explanation of cumulative sentence, using a cumulative sentence.

The additions placed after it move backward, as in this sentence you are now reading, to modify the statement of the base clause or more often to explain it or add examples or details to it, so that the sentence has a flowing and ebbing movement, advancing to a new position and then pausing to consolidate it.

I just love the cleverness of doing things like this. An even more elaborate version would be John Hollander’s extraordinary text Rhyme’s Reason. I am sure that there is a term for the phenomenon that is a better articulation than my wobbly attempt, but I don’t know it.

Reviewing the Module

Similarly, Dr. Bernard Bull has crafted a module on formative and summative assessment wherein completing the lesson requires the use and application of both kinds of assessment.

For some quick clarification, here is a short example of the two contrasting types:

Formative Assessment is a label for a range of informal and diagnostic methods to improve teaching and learning activities during the experience. They typically involves a variety of potential feedback, as well as additional opportunities for improvement. It is assessment for learning.

Summative Assessment is a label for more formal methods of monitoring achievement of desired outcomes and accountability at the end of teaching and learning experience. It may involve qualitative feedback but feedback may also be limited or simply some kind of score. It is assessment of learning.

Examining a Summative Assessment

For the open course, badges have served as the main summative assessment for each unit or module. The fact that the badge serves as a credential of achievement and demonstration of the understanding a lesson or module’s content makes it summative in nature. Of course, as established in the lesson any summative assessment can be made into a formative one with ease.

While I did not need to repeat any submissions, I suspect that were anyone to falter in meeting the criteria for a badge they would be afforded a subsequent submission. In fact, the feedback provided in the badge management service Credly suggests a recursive, even formative, aspect to essentially summative tasks. Certainly time has its limitations for repeated review, but everyone managing the badge review has been extraordinarily responsive and kind.

Thus, the primary summative task to achieve the badge for this particular module is reviewing the lesson itself. Yet, this analysis is immediately made formative by nature of the second instruction that requires soliciting “feedback on [the critique] from someone in the face-to-face world.”

Additionally, as with every badge opportunity in the class, students are encouraged to share their thoughts with the online community set up for the course on Google+ or their personal learning network on Twitter. All of these suggestions to “consider” are ways to gain valuable, quick feedback to further and fine-tune understanding.

Moving from Summative to Formative Assessment

Still, in the ways mentioned, nearly every summative assessment presented in the course is easily modified into a formative one with only the slightest of modifications. While this interplay and overlap between the two types of assessment can be slightly confusing with only superficial understanding, a review of the concepts, especially the explanations in the introductory and Wormeli videos, can quickly clarify.

Formative Feedback at Work

Already built into the module are number of types of formative feedback. Upon completion and submission for the badge, Instructor Feedback is made available in Credly. There is an invitation to seek Peer Feedback by sharing with the Google+ community and additional an PLN. Another recommendation is soliciting feedback from “someone in the face-to-face world,” which qualifies as Outside or Mentor or Advisor Feedback. This does not leave many forms of feedback left to be added only deepened or enhanced.

One missing type is Computer-Generated Feedback. Adding a quick review task for the videos or readings to serve as a check for understanding could be put to use with a set of questions or quiz that was automatically scored.

While the actual development of the lesson critique to be submitted for the badge could be considered a kind of Self Feedback, it might be a bit of a stretch. So another missing type is Self Feedback. Adding some kind of final reflective component could enhance the Self Feedback aspect and remove all doubt that it is part of the module.

Also, requiring some kind of collaboration between participants in the course could be a way to ensure Peer Feedback. In general, soliciting Peer Feedback has always been a recommendation more than a requirement for a badge. Another possibility could be the typical “respond to two peers posts” method that has become a staple of so many online learning experiences, albeit one in need a refresh.

The Outside Advisor Feedback I received helped me refine and clarify my analysis. I gave the my reviewer the protocol that I used for the Peer Feedback module and badge, which guided their feedback and targeted it more specifically. This made the need for establishing greater clarity of terms for someone unfamiliar with the context of the course, assessment, or concepts, which would be helpful to an reader that happened upon the page.

The Only Assessment that Matters

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A fellow National Writing Project colleague and friend Paul Allison and I were talking once upon a time, when he posed a question very close to this, “In the end, self-assessment is the only assessment that really matters isn’t it?” That may not be exactly what he said, but that is how I like to remember it. Plus, it certainly captures the spirit of the brief exchange. The sentiment resonated so strongly with me it has remained ever since.

We all must live with ourselves an awfully long time, more than anyone else certainly has to live with us. That’s for sure. It is not uncommon for me share comments like these and stress the importance of reflection and self-assessment with my students.

A Brief Anecdote on Student Self-Assessment

A few years ago, I received the most remarkable student self-assessment I have ever read, as part of an end-of-semester writing portfolio. Also, I have to admit being a little disconcerted when I saw myself quoted in a student paper, but this student simply gets it and gets it on a deeper level than I ever would have imagined. It also seemed to highlight a lot of the issues that have been shared and discussed in this MOOC. Here is an excerpt.

Through the course of the year, I have been writing down bits of conversations, words, and tips that I have heard in English class. Some are funny, some are weird, and some really stick with me. On October 28th, you said, “[Self-assessment] is really the only assessment that matters.” Is it? Through the course of the year, I grew more and more at home with this statement. If I know I am doing the best I can, then everything else is secondary. “Any time you’re focused on the grade, you are off target,” you said on February 14th [and has] always been a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. Through the year, though, these quotes bloomed into significant meaning. Whenever I write, like now for instance, it needs to just be the best I can do. My goal is to make my point and prove it in my writing, not simply to reach 600 words. This is a way that I have grown as both a student and a person, because as my mindset in school shifted, so did my outlook on the rest of my life.

Keep in mind this is from a former ninth grade student. It remains my favorite, most fascinating student self-assessment I have ever received. It broke all expectations. In fact, reading something like this, written by a student, makes a lot of the slogging through drafts as an English teacher, a whole lot less daunting.

My Latest Plan for a Self-Assessment

I am about to wrap a narrative writing unit with my ninth grade students, which I have already mined for examples for Beyond Letter Grades. Heavily influenced by George Hillocks’ Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching, I have been using a lot of the methodology outlined in that title ever since reading it.

Beginning with a pre-test audit to be written in a one hour class, students were given the following prompt right from Hillocks: Write a story about an event that is important to you for some reason. Write about it in as much detail as you can so that someone reading it will be able to see what you saw and feel what you felt.

This week students will submit their anchor summative assignment, which they have had a couple of weeks to develop. Later in the week, they will take the post-test, another hour in class writing task, with the same pre-test prompt. In between, they have completed a handful of what I like to call rehearsal assignments, practicing specific narrative techniques listed in this rubric, also something I have adapted from Hillocks.

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I have deliberately kept only a handful of broad categories to be assessed. Using this rubric, I already scored the pre-test, and will also use it to score the summative narrative task and the post-test.

Prior to assigning the summative narrative task, I issued and reviewed the rubric with students, in an effort to key them explicitly into the skills and technique I am hoping that they will demonstrate, despite routinely highlighting them in classroom instruction and various reading selections.

Once they have done a round of peer feedback and submitted the summative narrative task and completed the post-test, I am going to have students conduct a self-assessment.

1. I will ask each student to score their summative narrative task with the rubric, prior to submitting it.
2. I will hand each student their pre-test and ask them to score it with the rubric.
3. I will hand each student their post-test and again ask them to score it with the rubric.
4. I will then ask them to write narrative feedback about the difference between the two scores, specifically focusing on what they have identified as improvement and why.

I am considering sharing the scores I gave each student on both the pre-test and post-test, and asking them to consider any potential discrepancies between their scores and mine, but I am still undecided on this point.

Turning Summative into Formative

Since I have students complete an end-of-semester writing portfolio, this exercise will be good preparation for a more general, reflective self-assessment that accompanies the portfolio, like the student excerpt included above. Keeping with a broader strategy of looping many of the tasks and skills over the length of the course, this narrative self-assessment becomes a rehearsal for the portfolio one.

All three assessments then become fair game for revision, thus transforming a summative assessment into a formative one. Students may choose which piece that they would ultimately like to include in the portfolio. Since each one is a story, it can become more difficult to decide which story they want to revise, develop further, and include as their best of the narrative bunch along with the other modes and genres that comprise the portfolio.

Coda

In the end, I am blending a number of concepts celebrated in this class in my teaching practice, sometimes in a number of simultaneous ways. Occasionally, I wonder if it can become too complicated for my students. However, the only thing I am truly concerned about is that students are able to learn, improve, and demonstrate their learning in a few different ways. This is also a message that I repeatedly try to impress upon them over the length of the course.

Attempting many alternative assessment methods requires a pretty substantial initial investment of time and energy in developing relationships,  setting expectations, and building trust. It may be a bit ambitious, but I can say that the results have been relatively successful, especially as I continue to refine and advance my reasons, approach, and methods.