Students Self Assessment through Digital Formative Assessments

ETTC6433

ISTE 2 - Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

TRIGGERING QUESTION:  How can I use technology to help students use assessment data to assess their own learning, determine learning goals and monitor their progress over time?

This past week, I was working on my TPEP self-assessment.  One of the areas I would like to improve in is having my students use assessment data to access their own learning to determine learning goals and monitor their progress over time.  I was also trying to get a formative assessment graded where students were doing a narrative piece of writing where they were  required to take on a character from ancient Roman times and explain through an email how the Christians were being treated in Rome. This week we also did some peer editing to improve their writing.   But I was looking through them I thought there needs to be something out there that can help students assess their own writing and get quicker results than me reading and scoring 90+ assignments and to help them assess their own learning.

EXPLORATION

I looked at some tools through GOOGLE and found some videos that showed how I could use google forms and spreadsheets to create self-assessments for student.  One of these was using Google sheets for reflections  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9z4F5l15MY). I also tried using a spreadsheet with a student’s data and then create a chart using that data.  

I started off by putting in a student’s data.  

Then I clicked “insert” and picking “chart”, I got the following bar graph:

Then I right clicked on the “chart” and was given more options and selected a line chart and got the following:

My thought is that these tools not only introduce how to creating charts digitally to students, but then can help the students reflect in what they need to work on to improve their writing, therefore setting their own learning targets as we go forward.

I also looked at using WriQ which is a add on tool for google docs that is free, but although it would give information on conventions,  it didn’t address the categories I needed to assess which were claim, evidence and reasoning.  Here’s a sample:

Then as I was looking for articles about self-assessment, I came across the article “Classroom Tech for Learning Checks”.  In this article I was hoping to find some ways for my students to self-assess their learning.   It gave me ideas for tools I use in my classroom such as Kahoots and Plicklers to provide opportunities for students to gather data about their learning, but not about taking the next step and setting goals and monitoring their progress over time.  It also reminded me why I want to use technology to do the gathering of the data -- it is faster, therefore it gets the information to both the teacher and students faster so we can adjust.

I also read a blog entry by Vicki Davis entitled “Fantastic, fast formative assessment tools”.  In her blog she include the ones I had seen in the previous article as well as Socrative, Quizzits, SMART Lab, Nearpod, Edpuzzle and Seesaw.

I then read the article, “NEW WAVE in writing”, that Hillary shared.  After reading the article I looked at some of the digital sources that were mentioned such as “Revision Assistant”  and and although I thought some would accomplish what I am looking for, I am not sure how I could convince my district to invest in them.  This ties to one of the articles we were to read this week,  “Deepening Connections - Teachers Increasingly Rely on Media and Technology” .  In this article it addresses this specific barrier on page 6 and discusses how teachers are paying for these services out of their own money as districts are not able to.  If I only had 30 students I might consider doing it, but not with 150 students at anywhere from $30 to $150 per student.

REFLECTION

Even though I ended up looking at tools that could help with formative assessments instead of a tools that would directly make the students reflect and assess their learning, I now think that  by integrating the tools that I have found  my students will have a “sense of accountability and ownership over their learning process”(16) like they found in the Horizon Report, therefore meeting my goal. Also, since these tools are competitive they will keep students engaged and wanting to improve their learning.

I will also continue to look for tools that can students assess their own writing and perhaps I'll be able to persuade my school district to offer these tools to students and teachers.

REFERENCES

Davis, V. (2015, January 15). Fantastic, fast formative assessment tools | Edutopia. Retrieved from
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/5-fast-formative-assessment-tools-vicki-davis

Deepening Connections - Teachers Increasingly Rely on Media and Technology
. (n.d.).file:///E:/CTS-Some/Downloads/Deepening%20Connections%20-%20Teachers%20Increasingly
%20LLC.pdf

Horizon Report (2015 ed., Horizon K-12 Edition, pp. 1-60, Rep.). (n.d.).

doi:https://canvas.spu.edu/courses/24664/files/759106?module_item_id=170163

Fink, J. (2016). New WAVE in writing. District Administration, 52(8), 49-51.

SMITH, K., & FALBE, K. N. (2016). Classroom tech for learning checks. AMLE Magazine, 4(4), 42-43.