USING ASSESSMENT EFFECTIVELY

What are the qualities of Effective Records?

In the previous module I discussed how vital it was to keep track of the progress of the students in your class in terms of their ICT capability. Record keeping is not only good for that but also it aides in the progression and continuity of student learning. Imagine if you were able to keep accurate records of students and be able to pass it on to other teachers so that they can plan. You may recall how I discussed earlier on the importance of accurately assessing students’ capabilities and being able to use the Learning Continuum level descriptions in a more effective and efficient way. By keeping accurate records you will be able to achieve exactly that. The ‘best fit’ scenario will mean that you will be able to pin point where they are exactly between various levels of progression.

To keep effective records it is important that they show the complete coverage of ICT used and the progression that you had planned for it (Ager, 2003). It needs to be a quick way for you to recall which group has done which activity. The first record I would suggest for this would be having an ‘aide memoire’. As a teacher myself, I know that time is never on our side and so having one of these will help you keep track. Adequate information needs to be kept in them to help not just your planning but also if you have any pre-service teachers or supply teachers who might be taking your class in the future. Most importantly, and I will quote Ager (2003, p. 71) that there “needs to be an appropriate balance between the time time to fill in the information and the detail of information recorded.” For example, if you make it too quick to fill out it may hold too little information and be worthless. On the otherhand, a sophisticated recording sytem may be fantastic in theory with potentially great information, but teachers don’t have a lot of time on their hands and so you may not have of that time to fill it out completely rendering the entire system useless too.

Keeping records needs to be a managable task not just for you but the whole school system. You may recall the activity planning sheet I discussed earlier with you. You can follow on from this by having a checklist indicating which students have carried out various activities. Your record must be informative and contain the main techniques you want the students to learn and develop. Once again, I will emphasise the assistance of the coding sytem to record the progress. If you need help in completing these systems enlist the assistance of an adult helper or teaching assistant.

Continuing on with your teacher records from the planning sheet you can design a sheet to record anything significant concerning a particular student’s progress. This should not take up too much time as it has little to do with the activity itself. Instead record points about the coverage of techniques a student learnt and their confidence in using them. In addition, don’t forget to recognise their higher order skills such as planning, choosing techniques, hypothesising and evaluating the techniques and tools used.

Student self-assessment records will need to be kept on file. They can record their own progress. Can you recall what I said about how they should look? Possible statements that it could include are:

• “I can analyse results and present the information in a variety of forms.” • “I can access information from the Internet.” • “I can program a sequence of instructions (traffic lights) using a control box.” (Ager, 2003)

Such records can be used by the students as a basis for talking to you about their work when they completed the task.

ICT checking points are an ideal method to implement as they can be undertaken throughout the lesson and this cuts back any additional time that may be needed and enables you to provision more time to other tasks. However, if this doesn’t occur it is best to ensure that any record keeping necessary is completed at the end of the lesson when your memory of student capabilities is still fresh or as soon as possible after the lesson.

Using assessment to develop teaching strategies

The assessment of ICT capability is vital as it will allow you to track progress and to plan appropriately for students to achieve their capabilities. Proper assessment will provide you with real evidence and knowledge of where the students are up to. The data that you receive from this assessment will play a crucial role in helping you to look back on just how effective the teaching approaches have been to a particular ICT technique, routine or process. Here are ten help tips that Higgins, Packard and Race (1999, pp. 82-83) suggest might help might you develop more effective teaching strategies.

1. Look back at your ‘before’ and ‘after’ assessments:

Did the class make the sort of improvement you expected? Are there certain parts of the development that they demonstrated that are better than expected? Can you identify what it is was you said, or that they discovered, that might have brought about these improvements? If you can, you know what to stick with, and what you need to develop further.

2. Ask students lots of questions:

You will get a good idea from their answers what the children really know and understand. Knowing this will help you decide where to go next. It may help you identify opportunities for peer tutoring, self-help groups, and so on.

3. Ask ‘why’ questions:

This probes students’ understanding more and at the same time makes them more aware of what they understand. The more aware they are of what they know, the better equipped they are to help one another. Here, being able to talk about it, and reflect upon it is a good step towards more independent learning.

4. Get them to show you:

A demonstration of how to save or print a file on the computer either to you or to other students is a good way to assess how well they have been taught, and worthwhile consolidation for them, too.

5. Eavesdrop and don’t interrupt when students are collaborating:

When you barge into collaborative conversation, students will assume you know what they have been talking about all the time. Listen first. This is easier when students are sitting at the computer and you creep up behind them.

6. Identify student who can, and get them to support those who can’t:

Peer tutoring in pairs is one of the most effective means of support you can establish. In general, it is best not to have too great a difference of ability between the pair. A ‘most able’ student could help ‘middle range’ student as a pair, and ‘middle ranger’ can help a lower attainer.

7. Identify common errors, and talk about these to a large group of the class:

There are many common misunderstandings and errors in using the computer, in areas such as understanding word-wrap, or clicking several times rather than waiting patiently, or assuming that you click OK or YES to every dialogue box.

8. Assessing group work with one computer is appropriate:

Planning a group task where the computer is a resource or a tool is an efficient way to use it. It is harder to assess the results of group tasks, but students can learn a lot from each other.

9. Assess individual work, too:

There are times when assessment of individual use of the computer may be needed. This can alert you to individual’s particular needs. For example, some students never seem to have an opportunity to hold the mouse and may need their confidence boosting so that can develop their fine motor skills. © ICTE Solutions Australia 2017

10. Use you assessment findings to help children reflect on what they have done:

If you can find time to sit down with a child, or small group, and talk about what they have done and what that tells you about their abilities and development, it can have a significant impact on children’s motivation and progress.

Sharing Perspectives across Schools and Classes

Effective and efficient assessment of ICT capability plays such a significant role in the development of a student’s capability with ICT. It not only ensures that your planning is on target, but other teacher’s too, and not just at your school but also other schools as well. Already I have discussed how important record keeping can be for you. Record keeping also plays a big role in enabling progression and continuity of student capabilities to occur. The problem is that there can be a large amount of information stored in these records and that means the chances of vital data being ignored or overlooked is high.

What is important for you to do is to ensure that the information is condensed in some way in which you will be able to get all of these significant data across that contains key elements pertaining to a student’s ICT capability. The receiving secondary teacher will be grateful as he or she will have a clear picture of each individual’s ICT capability.

There are three suggestions offered by Kennewell et al. (2000) claims will help schools to decide the best way to move forward:

• Portfolio of work – use teacher annotations and comments to provide a comprehensive picture of an individual’s capabilities. Avoid being selective as to what to include and provide the secondary ICT coordinator with three portfolios from each contributing primary school. Each would represent the work considered to be at level 3, 4 and 5. In doing this, you will be giving the ICT coordinator a better picture of the level of attainment along with the other data that would be very useful for planning; • Record Cards – These contain the minimum amount of data and this may be what your school prefers.

The result is that the students will be placed against the Australian Curriculum ICT Capability Learning

Continuum attainment level. These statements need to have a focus on the processes and concepts learnt as opposed to the typical detail on ICT techniques that would only represent one component of ICT capability. In addition, focusing on higher order skills would only provide valuable data for monitoring across the curriculum if it was implemented across all Learning Areas rather than being specific to ICT.

The statements need to be tailored to the particular schemes of work implemented at the school. This is not to say that you should not include information about generic ICT techniques to monitor the development of routine skills. • Student Self-assessment – see Student Self-Assessment.

Creating a careful combination of criteria in making assessments of ICT capability attainment

When coming up with criteria to help you judge the ICT capability of students it is important to remember that it the decisions made by students in order to create a finished product that needs to be judged. In other words, their higher order skills! The judgement you make will depend ultimately on the appropriateness of the outcomes from the task or activity, the ICT techniques and processes, the strategies observed, the resources available, the time taken and the support provided (Kennewell, Parkinson, & Tanner, 2000).

Remember not to assess other subject knowledge and as Kennewell et al. (2000) points out don’t aim for a level of precision that is not reachable by the students and unnecessary. Begin lessons by having an initial whole class discussion and intervene to help them design features of products. For example, if they were © ICTE Solutions Australia 2017

working on a poster to encourage young children to eat healthful foods you could intervene to help them design features for this. However, if they were unable to choose inappropriate foods for their illustration, you would need to consider whether this is because:

• They have not understood the requirements of the task; • They have misunderstood the nutritional content of the foods; • The clip-art available is limited; • They are unable to locate or insert the appropriate images.

According to Kennewell et al. (2000) the first three would have no effect on the assessment of ICT capability. However, by having a plenary evaluation at the end of the ICT activity you will be able to help the students focus on what makes an effective poster using science criteria and ICT criteria concerning the selection of ICT techniques and visual effects.

Reporting your Assessments

The effective assessment of student ICT capability can improve the quality of the information provided to parents in reports. Annual reports needs to be written in a way that considers the needs of the parents. There also must be a balance between being informative and being brief. Here are some other factors to consider when writing a report on student ICT capability.

1. What can the child do? Set this in the context of the experiences that the student has had over a period of time. 2. Are there any special accomplishments and what difficulties have been encountered? 3. What is the level of attainment in terms of the National Curriculum? It is a good idea to discuss the student’s level in relation to other students of the same age group throughout the country rather than their position within the class. It is important that if this comparison is to be meaningful, you need to have background information about the overall ability of the class itself. 4. Identify how the student can improve making reference to future topics and activities as well as more specific advice on ways in which the child could be assisted to improve. 5. Never place pressure on parents to spend money on software or a computer for example, in order the student to improve their expertise. 6. Rephrase your information as you would with teachers for parents to understand. 7. Keep information about the student’s ICT capability, in some sense related to the attainment level descriptions, if they do not actually a level to a student. 8. For each student, review your task based assessments and refer to the complete folder of the student’s work. 9. Summarise the comments made about the student’s ICT capability during the term/semester/year.

One last point to remember and that is the key to progression and continuity in student ICT capability is effective development. From this you can proficiently write on their capabilities and this information is then great to use for future planning

Coordinating Assessment

Throughout this work, I have discussed the effectiveness of formative assessment in ICT capability. Despite some teachers in schools preferring to use summative assessment in my view this is the best way to determine attainment. If your role at the school is also the ICT coordinator, then it is also your job to ensure that © ICTE Solutions Australia 2017

To use as an example, a study in the United Kingdom (Kennewell, Parkinson, & Tanner, 2000) conducted at school found that the coordinator had listed each of the expected level attainments using terms that other teachers would find easy to recognise and use. The result was that all teachers were able to determine what progression was expected.

In the case of using summative assessment, it is advised that you use exemplar portfolios which “contain a set of from a particular student for whom there is general agreement about the level of attainment” (Kennewell, Parkinson, & Tanner, 2000, p. 80). A portfolio such as this will enable you to compare the performance of other students and thus develop a common understanding of expected standards. It is important that you ensure that your colleagues consider the process of producing the task outcomes as well as the affordance of the learning environment available to students. The portfolio should contain:

• The task context and objectives; • The process of development for the work – plans, drafts, comments on decisions made etc.; • The resources available; • The help given by teacher and peers concerning ICT (not concerning other subject matter for which the student might have required assistance). (Kennewell, Parkinson, & Tanner, 2000)

The contents of the portfolio mentioned above should always be discussed during staff meetings. Kennewell et al. points out that (2000, p. 81) it is a great also to meet with the non-specialist teachers at your school and “discuss with them the features of the work which characterised progression from earlier attainment as well as the degree of independence shown by each student in the process of achieving the outcome.” Remember, as mentioned earlier, it is essential that all assessment approaches are designed to support the teaching approaches to ICT capability development.

Effective judgement on student ICT capability has to consider:

• The quality of student’s response to a task in terms of the choices made and techniques used; • The complexity of the task; • The way the task was achieved; • The help students were given and; • The matching of evidence of a student’s performance to one of the level descriptions in the ICT capability Learning Continuum.

If you work at a P-12 school, there are three approaches that studies have indicated have been successful and are based on curriculum organisation (Kennewell, Parkinson, & Tanner, 2000):

• Discrete model: This is where ICT is treated as every other subject and the ICT department has its own scheme of work and assessment procedures designed to encourage progression and continuity in discrete lessons; • Cross-curricular: ICT learning and assessment is integrated across all Learning Areas in the curriculum context. Here the coordinator’s role was to map the plans of the other subject coordinators, negotiate adjustments to ensure progression and continuity in ICT for students, and advise other teachers on how to assess ICT capability in their subject context; • Core Skills: The module of ICT teaching is followed by an application in a subject context. Plan it jointly with a representative of the subject department to ensure that the task specific criteria for assessment is agreed upon.

My preference would be the cross-curricular approach as it simulates the changes occurring within society in a more efficient manner as we live in an ICT-integrated society. If this is your choice too, you will need to carefully design an assessment system.

There are three levels at which assessment, recording and reporting of ICT capability should be carried out. These are lesson-based, Activity-based and Term/Year-Based assessments (Stanley & Tanner, 2003, pp. 119120). You need to give advice to class and subject teachers about your expectations of students. In addition, provide them with a recording framework with task specific prompts. Do not make the assessment process just a box-ticking exercise though.

Lesson-based Assessments

Purpose: To monitor the progress of individual students, to evaluate the effectiveness of the lesson, and to plan specific oral feedback to students for the next lesson.

• Identify the learning objectives for the lesson; • Devise opportunities for students to engage with the objectives; • Set the criteria for success in terms of processes and outcome; • For each student, note whether success was achieved independently, with some help, with much help, or was not achieved; • Note the applications for the next lesson.

This process does not require detailed records for each student. Having a lengthy checklist would not be suitable.

Activity-based Assessments

Purpose: To ascertain the National Curriculum level of student’s work and to provide written feedback on their skills for development.

1. Identify the purpose of the activity outcome (e.g. poster to advertise a school concert); 2. Determine the features required for (Learning Continuum related) levels, marks, grades in terms of particular aspects of the process and the outcome; 3. Review each student’s response to the activity, together with lesson-level assessments, to produce a level, mark or grade; 4. Give feedback to the student in the form of suggestions for improvement (process and outcome) as well as a level, mark or grade.

In this situation, detailed records is not necessary. Instead, record the particular strengths and weaknesses in order to you inform your future planning.

Term/Yearly Assessments

Purpose: To provide a summative report on the student’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to expected progress.

1. Review records of activity-based assessments (and possibly the complete folder of each student’s work); 2. Decide the overall Learning Continuum level as the description which best fits the student’s attainment; 3. Summarise the comments made about the activity process and outcome during the year for this student.