What Are We Assessing?
There were a couple of “Patches” that grabbed my attention, but I decided to comment on Patch Nine: Shifting Your Design of Assessment. This has long been of interest to me as I have, as suggested in the patch, provided many opportunities for students to submit work for review prior to them submitting a final version. Some would say this creates more work but actually, because I have seen the assignment already, I just need to check if the changes have been made for the final version. For quizzes, in courses where I have little control to change the design, I often do them with the students during class to discuss the questions and answers before they choose the correct answer. This is particularly true for grammar and APA formatting where discussing the questions causes dialogue and, in my opinion, greater understanding and learning. I have also found that even if I review an exam and basically tell the students what is coming up and how to answer the questions, there are students who will fail because they have not learned during the course.
People say but helping the students, I might be giving them marks, but I do not believe so because I see my role as helping the students to gain the knowledge not just the mark in what is a very mark centered culture. This feeds directly into the paragraph I am reflecting on:
Last semester, we gave a workshop to faculty members at the American University in Cairo entitled “Are My Assessments Really Promoting Learning?” The goal of the workshop was to encourage those faculty members to question the purpose of assessment, and to explore ways of modifying existing assessments in ways that would enhance student learning. Here we are talking about classroom assessments that are usually within the remit of the individual faculty member, things like assignments, quizzes, projects, exams, presentations, or whatever else you use in your classes to assess student learning (graded or ungraded). Our workshop was partly inspired by an article by Kris Shaffer and this particular quote: “No system of academic assessment is intrinsically good, only good for a purpose. That purpose must be established first.
I think much of what is constructed as assessment does not actually allow for learning or for solving problems. Instead, many assignments are what I call, ‘make work’ assignments. I am always questioning the assignments in the courses where I have no control and my work around is to provide opportunities as described above. For example, I heavily edit first drafts of writing, and some may say, “well, aren’t you writing their essay?”. Actually, no. When I ask students, they say but seeing their mistakes so clearly, they learn and subsequent assignments improve.
Another issue that always bothers and concerns me is that my marks overall maybe much higher than other similar classes because of my approach. I often wonder if this might be held against me. I of course would not do well in a ‘bell curve’ environment where Professors are forced to mark on a bell curve. Quite honestly, I am not sure I could work in such an environment.
I choose this picture to illustrate the idea of a bell curve because really, where does it lead in relation to learning? It is an admistrative policy rather than an open road to learning.
https://unsplash.com/photos/FWCjJ7VNm-k
Photo by David Talley on Unsplash
For now, any assignment I develop will always have the question of purpose at its’ heart and any assignments I do not have control over, I will continue to use my own approach of providing additional opportunities for feedback and understanding. This graphic shows my approach visually.
https://www.spiderscribe.net/app/?0d55082a8f4f5c9fc6ac7e19776e3fbf
TweetExample for "What Are We Assessing?":
https://unsplash.com/photos/FWCjJ7VNm-k
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