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By the OER Project Team
By now, you may be settling into the new routines and practices that come with teaching at a distance. Just as you do when you teach in the physical classroom, you likely have a “am I ready to teach today?” checklist you go through each morning:
- Camera on, audio working, and light good? Check.
- Zoom room ready? Check.
- Lesson plan revised for teaching at a distance? Check.
- Business on top, PJs on the bottom? Check.
- How will I know what they’re thinking today? Uhhhh, maybe no check.
Although many teachers (and students) are getting more comfortable with how to “do school” at a distance, assessment can still be a challenge. So, how do we do this—especially when assessment can be challenging enough in “normal” times?
Well, the good news is that the underlying principles for assessment in the classroom haven’t really changed. Assessment should be happening everywhere and all the time, driving both your instructional choices and student focus. And summative assessment shouldn’t change a whole lot either. The bad news is, it’s not nearly as easy to “read the room” as it was before, there seems to be a lot more to grade and assess, and lots of schools are changing their idea of what counts toward a grade. Yet, despite some added challenges, we do find that a strong approach to assessment at a distance is really not too different from a strong approach to assessment in the physical classroom! Whether you’re teaching remotely, in person, or using a hybrid approach, our assessment recommendations will help you create ways to check student understanding.
Where do we start and where are we headed?
Early in the school year, we recommend you focus on quick, formative assessments to help get a sense of what’s going on generally. Remember, assessment is not JUST about student learning, but should also focus on student well-being. It’s hard to be a focused learner if your well-being is in question! If you have synchronous time with your students, using something as simple as a thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumbs sideways (or a 1 to 5 rating scale, where students can add numbers to a chat) can help you understand how students are doing, feeling, and what they’re understanding. Sometimes, it can just help you gauge whether or not they’re actually there, and haven’t just put a picture of themselves in front of their camera and walked away…. As a reminder, the thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways tactic is an effective and quick way for assessment even if you’re not teaching remotely.
Once you’ve established some initial routines and classroom practices, start digging into student learning a bit more. Use rubrics, progression tools, and other OER Project course resources such as the DQ/UP/EP notebooks and repeated activities to assess student progress. The rubrics and progression tools are really helpful for looking at student growth and understanding. Since they are static, students should start scoring higher on the rubric or provide more detailed and richer responses as they use the course progression tools. A quick check of these is one great way to assess progress using different historical thinking and reasoning practices. Just make sure that students are aware of their learning goals and targets for each assignment so everyone is aligned with what is being both worked on and assessed.
And while you should be assessing all the time and everywhere, how is this possible with the other nine million things you have to do? Discussion forums are great for assessing thinking quickly—just do yourself a favor and make sure you have a rubric to go along with your forum. (Check out a quick video on discussion forums here.) Some teachers have found that giving video feedback or having short conferences with students can be faster than providing more traditional, written feedback. Assigning group work and projects can also reduce your grading load. However, if you are assigning shared grades of any kind, be sure you have a system of accountability set up to make sure all students participate.
Have students take responsibility for a lot of the assessment work. Make certain they understand the goals and purpose of all assignments, have them rate their confidence in their work and understanding when submitting it to you, and create peer assessment opportunities whenever possible. And have students set goals for their learning. If they submitted an Investigation or DBQ using Score, have them choose one area of improvement based on the feedback they received and have them work on that.
Finally, don’t forget to review the handy Teaching at a Distance Assessment Guide that Trinity College Dublin helped us create. This is a nice, at-a-glance reminder to assess, assess more, and then assess again!
Header images: Students in an exam hall © Roy Mehta / Iconica / Getty Images Plus (left) and Young girl doing homework and using laptop © Bob Winsett / Photolibrary / Getty Images Plus (right).
