Introducing alternative forms of assessment
Contents
Introducing alternative forms of assessment¶
Motivation¶
Assessment can have a big impact on our students. While students often view the work they do in class as a means to a grade, our goal as instructors is typically that the activities we ask them to do help them learn.
If you’re here, you may have noticed/felt that:
You want learning in your classes to come more from intrinsic motivation
Students approach assignments as a formula rather than a learning experience
You want to create solid procedural justice so that you can grade with minimum bias
Grading takes longer than you’d like, especially if you’re providing in-depth feedback
You want to shift students’ goal of getting a good grade to learning to their potential
You want to give students opportunities to try multiple times, to learn and revise, without the grading being too onerous
One way to help students shift mindsets is by first shifting our own. We can focus the way we evaluate that work to center students learning to help direct their attention to their own learning.
You're not grading assignments.
— Tyler Rablin (@Mr_Rablin) September 20, 2020
You're collecting evidence to determine student progress and pointing them towards their next steps.
Make the mental switch. It matters.
Making the switch¶
When starting to look into alternative forms of assessment, we may become overwhelmed by all the different terms, grading schemes, and the wealth of resources with no clear roadmap of where to start and what to do. Sometimes we may even become discouraged because we try to change too much in one attempt or because no one else in our department has attempted something like this and we feel unsupported. However, the goal of this workshop and workbook is to help you get started and have you join a community of fellow educators making the switch to center learning and Eequity in assessment.
Key features of equitable, learning-focused assessment¶
An incredibly brief summary of what our goals are:
Explicit expectations (of work and background knowledge)
Multiple attempts, to mirror learning process
Clear and valuable feedback
Unbiased assessment
Agency for students
Getting started¶
Note
If you’re joining live in the workshop, we’ll guide you through these steps
To get started, we recommend you:
Check out the glossary which contains terms frequently used throughout the workbook
Complete the how-tos in order, that is:
Remember to start small! If you change too many things at once, you won’t know what works well for your students and what needs improvement.
Feedback from your students will be an invaluable resource– give them the time and space to share feedback.
Continous reflection, learning, and iteration are also critical.
What did you or did you not like about your changes?
Based on the previous question, what will your next version look like?
What do you need to learn more about?
Keep learning (check out our resources and contribute to the workbook).
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