Assessment for Learning

I recently completed a free online course on Assessment for Learning (AfL) in STEM teaching. The course was put together by the UK's National STEM Centre, and was hosted by Future Learn. I'm hoping to try out a few of the techniques I learned about this coming semester.

                Image source: Flickr user Ken Whytock                                     

AfL is essentially a type of formative assessment, designed to give teachers a rapid picture of how many learners in their class have understood a particular topic or concept. A draft version of a paper co-authored by one of the course co-ordinators, Dylan Wiliam, can be found here. 

The main thrust of this course was aimed at helping teachers of STEM subjects to gauge whether or not their students have understood a particular scientific concept. It highlighted common misconceptions students have when learning science, and provided ways to diagnose these misconceptions in real-time in the classroom. 

One handy technique that was advocated was the use of hinge point questions (HPQs). These are questions, often multiple choice, that relate to specific misconceptions in order to identify which students have understood a particular concept, and those students who may need additional teaching in order to fully grasp the concept or to address the misconception. The HPQ is given to the whole class. Various ways may be used to collect responses - students could hold up numbered cards, or enter their responses into an app such as Google Forms, for example. 

The options for these multiple choice questions should be considered very carefully, and be set up in such a way that it is unlikely that a student could guess the correct answer. They should also provide the teacher with a snapshot of their students' understanding that is quick and easy to interpret. 

To give an example, a common misconception that arises when students are talking how evolution and natural selection operate is that organisms 'adapt themselves' to suit their environment. A hinge point question that could be used to tease out this misconception might be as follows:

• Which of the following statements are true about convergent evolution, for example the similar body forms seen in both sharks and dolphins? (You may choose one or more from the following options):

1. The ancestors of dolphins and sharks adapted themselves to life underwater during their lifetimes, and passed these adaptations on to their offspring.
2. Dolphins and sharks have similar body shapes because they both evolved from the same common ancestor.
3. Some ancestors of dolphins and sharks had similar traits that enabled them to successfully survive and reproduce underwater, and therefore these traits were passed on to their offspring.
4. The ancestors of dolphins lived near water and therefore adapted themselves to life underwater.

The correct answer, #3, could in theory be guessed by students, and there is no fool-proof way to prevent this. One possible solution would be to provide more than one correct answer. However, this would make interpretation of the results more difficult and time-consuming. During the AfL course, participants were encouraged to develop and submit HPQs of their own, which were then compiled and may be accessed here. 

AfL can provide benefits to both learners and teachers. Learners can benefit since HPQs can help them to focus on their own learning - what they know, and what they need to know, thus helping them to develop their metacognitive skills. Teachers benefit since they can get an idea of the level of understanding in a classroom, gain insights into differentiation strategies that may be required, and what scaffolding may be necessary in order to develop learners' understanding and begin moving it to a deeper level. 

Five reasons I like Google Classroom

This semester I have been trialling Google Classroom for the first time. I've rolled it out for the basic biology course I teach with my Grade 10 students. I'm still using Moodle as the primary LMS for this course, but instead of having students return assignments via Moodle I'm now using Classroom as the primary productivity platform. Not surprisingly there has been a bit of a learning curve for both myself and my learners. However, there are a number of features - pedagogically, administratively, and aesthetically - that Classroom offers which I really like, and I will outline here. 

1. Fostering collaboration

Google Classroom integrates seamlessly with Google Apps productivity tools such as Docs and Sheets. This means learners can work on shared documents with each other in real-time, whether they are sitting on opposite sides of the classroom or in their rooms at home. What's great to see is learners finding out for themselves what works for them when using these kinds of collaborative tools. For example, whilst working on one assignment, I observed one student rapidly typing an answer in Thai into a shared document, while on the other side of the room another member of her group was industriously translating and typing the answer in English. 

2. Rapid feedback to learners

The speed and ease with which I can provide feedback on learners' assignments is a really big advantage afforded by Classroom. While students are working on their assignments in a shared Doc they have all ownership and editing permissions for that Doc. Once they submit their work, however, ownership permissions are transferred to me, at which point I can add feedback directly into their Doc. Once I have finished checking all of their assignments, I simply click to return all work and the permissions switch back to the students. This kind of rapid feedback provides a lot of scope for effective formative assessment. 

3. Easily keep track of student work

Classroom makes it incredibly easy to keep track of student work. When assignments are created within Classroom, folders are automatically created and named, and all assignments are saved in these folders. There is no longer any need for piles of reports on your desk, or an inbox overflowing with assignments submitted via email. This paperless aspect of Google Classroom is another very attractive feature. Depending on how assignments are organised and distributed, Classroom also offers scope for creating digital portfolios for students in a single, easy to locate place. 

4. Students like it

I haven't yet had chance to formally evaluate my students' opinions on their use of Classroom. However, my observations so far suggest that they enjoy using it. They have submitted a number of assignments now, and I have not heard any negative comments regarding it. This is despite, as I mentioned earlier, there being a bit of a learning curve, and some technical issues. For example, there were a few difficulties early on with students creating documents outside of Classroom, then uploading them when they were complete. This causes slight problems with the naming and storing of these files, and also with the transfer of ownership between learner and teacher. However, I think this was mainly due to unclear instructions from me as to how they should go about this, it being a new system for me as well. 

5. It looks good

Lastly, Google Classroom just looks really cool! It has a very clear and straightforward interface and, up to a point, it can be customised and individualised, for example by adding your own photos to the top of the page. While this may seem less important in terms of learning, I think it does actually matter to learners if what they are looking at and navigating is aesthetically pleasing. 

Summary

So, to summarise, I feel that Google Classroom is a useful tool for both learners and teachers. It offers important pedagogical features, such as facilitating collaboration, and enabling the rapid feedback which is so essential for effective formative assessment. It provides teachers with a great way to organise students' work, and the potential for digital portfolios. Learners appear to like it and have taken to it quickly, and as an added bonus it looks good. The next step will be to roll it out for my other classes.

If anyone would like to share how they are using Google Classroom, I'd love to hear about it!

Mastering academic writing with EALs via formative assessment

I recently wrote about an extended piece of scientific writing I assign to my Grade 12 biology students. This is to be a fully cited and referenced piece, and in order to guide my students I set them a small number of brief pre-essay formative assessments relating to paraphrasing, summarising, and how to correctly use a consistent style (e.g. APA) for in-text citations and reference lists. Since these are formative assessments, and therefore assessments for learning, I check them and provide feedback but do not grade them, although students do get credit for participation.

One of the recurring problems for my learners when looking at author lists for their citations is determining an author's family name. This sounds like it should be straightforward, except that in Thai culture the family name is very rarely used, except in very formal situations. While someone's given first name is used slightly more commonly, it again is generally used in more formal situations. Mostly, people go by their ชื่เล่น (chu len), or nickname. This does somewhat simplify things in most day-to-day interactions, because Thai official names can be very long. For example, someone called Chattamachode Krassanairasuriwongse may go simply by the nickname 'P'! But it does bring me back to my original point - that Thais can find it difficult to correctly ascertain a Western author's family name when writing their citations and references. Carrying out formative assessment is a great way to identify these problems and provide learners with rapid feedback about where they are going wrong. 

Paraphrasing and summarising academic writing can prove difficult for many learners, but may present EALs with a much bigger challenge. Although there is some evidence to suggest that EALS can have an advantage when it comes to certain linguistic skills, there are some difficult challenges to overcome when learners' first language is so very different, and this is compounded in this case with the use of academic English. My students are often shocked when I point out that when writing literature reviews, authors must summarise entire research papers in a couple of lines. Again, I am hoping that by having learners engage in these formative assessment tasks they will gain a much clearer understanding of what is required for their final essay task.

A big help this year in providing timely feedback for learners came from using Google Classroom. This allowed me to distribute the formative assessments to students easily, and to then provide direct comments in their text and where they made errors. What I am also able to do, which was more difficult when using our previous LMS, Moodle, is to offer students the option to share their early drafts with me. This will allow me to give them real-time feedback on the development of their essay. Obviously I will not be re-writing their work for them, but I would like to scaffold them to achieve a level of mastery in academic writing, which will be more feasible with this kind of ongoing support. I will be interested to see how this approach affects the essays which get submitted at the end of the semester.