This is what I learned this week. First, you need to determine what the students already know. To accomplish this, a pre-test can be a very useful tool. A pre-test is a short assessment that helps you understand what the students already know and perhaps understand more about the diversity of understanding that is present in your classroom. However, make sure that the students know that it is not actually a test, or that it will even be graded at all so that they don't feel pressure to know content that they have never formally learned. But I ask myself if this is really that effective, I mean if students know it is not graded, how do we incentivize them to take it seriously? Hopefully,you have already demonstrated the value of the classes that you teach and you can help them to understand that by participating in the pre-test, that it will make the class more interesting.
Another tool that is especially useful for remaining as objective as possible are utilizing rubrics. I think that this is a tool that can help students understand what is expected of them (clarity of expectations), but in my own experience it can also limit the creativity of students. So there needs to be some sort of balance between establishing clear expectations and leaving it open-ended enough for students to be able to use their creative liberties.
We are supposed to be about learning, our goal is for our students to learn and be empowered by what they are learning. An effective strategy to ensure that this is happening is to give students the opportunity to revise their work that you have already graded and allow them to turn it back in for more feedback/a final grade.
That being said, I always think that a completely different perspective on things is refreshing and interesting. I came across some posts by Mark Barnes, who you may have heard of before, but he advocates for ditching grades altogether. I won't write about his opinions (some I agree with and others not so much), but check out this post and his Twitter feed if that sparks your interest.
Parting question: is there a difference between grading and assessing?
I agree with what you said about rubrics lacking in the creativity part. In one of our readings it mentioned to not put a criteria as broad as the word "creative" or "interesting". I think there should still be something that addresses the criteria on creativity and how interesting the project or presentation is. Perhaps this can be done by having students include a fun fact or use a different means to present other than powerpoint. It's tough but I think it can be done!
ReplyDeleteAs for your parting question, I'd say it depends. I think the grade comes down to the number/letter value, where as assessing looks at more of the performance side, however both go hand-in-hand when the evaluations are all said and done.
I am also struggling on the idea of how grading fits in to assessment. I would have to guess that the answer to your parting question lies somewhere in the idea of summative vs formative assessments.
ReplyDeleteI had a professor that also didn't like grading- viewed it as a necessary evil almost. He would always let us use our resources. Sometimes after a quiz, he gave us 5 minutes to check our answers and make changes in the column leaving the answers we started with- this helps student learning because you are defending answers within your group.
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