Focus on Assessment – Again! This past Friday we had a Faculty Talking Circle on Online Assessment. It was a rich discussion and a very honest conversation! During the weekend, I did a bit more thinking about what we discussed. Here are a few thoughts. Some of you may know that our family recently added two new members to it! Edgar and Daisy (perky ears!), two precocious little border collies. Right now they are about 12 weeks old and are still learning many things - so are we. Just after we took the siblings home we arranged a visit with the veterinarian for a check-up. One of the things we mentioned was that Edgar had the habit of bolting his food while Daisy would take a mouthful, walk a bit of a distance away and carefully chew what she had before returning to get another mouthful. By that time, Edgar may have eaten all of his portion and most of hers. It didn’t seem fair or equal! We didn’t want Edgar to end up being a fat little dog, especially at Daisy’s expense, so we thought about limiting his food intake or feeding Daisy separately. The vet told us to take a deep breath and relax. Just keep adding food to the dish; puppies self-regulate and limiting Edgar’s food intake might be harmful. He is likely moving through a growth spurt and, judging from his body type, he will likely be a bigger dog. Trying to be equal wouldn’t be fair; especially to Edgar. Yet, as educators we consistently fall into the trap of “fair must be equal”. We don’t want to be seen as favoring particular students and we sometimes hesitate about providing extra resources, support, time or opportunity, because “it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the class”. Why should a particular student get an extension on their project? They had better have some dire circumstances! How will they understand about deadlines and the “real world”? But fair isn’t equal. Fair is about giving every student the chance to thrive and succeed, and some students will need different kinds of support than others. Another example. Although I don’t often think of it as such, I have a learning accommodation. I wear eyeglasses. Without my beloved blue spectacles, I would be hard pressed to complete most tasks. If I had been taught in an environment where decisions were based solely on keeping all things equal, I should not have been permitted to wear them. Why should I be able to wear glasses while others did not? The fact that the others did not need glasses is immaterial. It’s not fair! It’s not equal! But, as educators, we think little of having students with glasses or hearing aids. They don’t get accommodations, they have aids that do little to interfere with our planning and practice. And, we do have many students who receive accommodations; and we do our best to support them. We have students who need extra time to process, students who need a scribe (graphomotor issues), students who need readers, students who need interpretation, and students who need different colour papers. We are trying to be fair by removing some of the barriers that might interfere with their learning. Their extra time, prepared notes, relaxed deadline, reader, or scribe is my glasses. Friday’s Discussion That brings me back to the Friday Talking Circle on Assessment. Originally I had intended the session to be a bit of an idea exchange. I invited a colleague from Lakeland College, Mabyn Grinde, to join us for the session, as she is working through many of the same challenges with the faculty there. Over twenty instructors were able to attend, as well as Joan Wall and Kerry Taillefer, who would help field questions! The plan was simple. Share some of the assessment principles seek input from instructors. Ask instructors to share some of their current challenges related to online assessment. Elicit a few suggestions and successes from each other that might improve our practices. Oh, and yes, maybe also talk about the new UDL 1.5 time requirement for conducting assessments. However, the 1.5 UDL (Universal Design for Learning) requirement quickly became the major focus of our discussion. The discussion became passionate and, at times, pointed. It was an honest conversation! We were concerned about what is fair, what is equal and whether students might get an unfair advantage. From my understanding the move to universal 1.5 timing for assessments was intended to allow students who may not have had learning challenges formally assessed, to be given the extra time. Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of our students may have struggled in isolation, with barriers to achievement such as inadequate technology or Wi-Fi access, anxiety or uncertainly related to the pandemic, childcare and other familial or relational obligations, shared use of technology (one computer for a whole family to do their work on), employment responsibilities and other stressors. Students who do not have these stressors would likely not take advantage of the extra time, but those who need the extra accommodation would be able to use it. Many of the faculty in the talking circle were, for the most part, very sympathetic to the concept of time and a half. Our students are under a lot of pressure and this decision seemed to come from a caring place. Never the less, there were a lot of questions and concerns related to this move.
Compounding the issues raised by the faculty is the fact that many of the established, closed-answer assessments (especially those with right/wrong answers) no longer work in an online world where students can screen capture and instant message. Open-ended assessments require more time to ideate, build, design effective scoring guides for, and mark! Getting More Context As special guests, I invited William Hamilton (Assistive Technology) and Kerry Taillefer (Testing Centre & Learning Support) to help address some of the emergent questions that might bubble up in the talking circle. Recently, William, Kerry, Joan and I were charged with helping the faculty learn about the 1.5 UDL requirement and it has been a bit of a challenge. The decision has also affected our roles and department staffing! William unfortunately could not attend the Friday talking circle. He did send along a few messages though:
Kerry provided some excellent points to consider as we work our way through this change. She has been looking into research on this matter and found out that:
Kerry suggested that we should work with our students to prepare them for the exams, make them aware of test-taking strategies and help them avoid stressing before or over-thinking during assessments. She also suggested talking with students about on how cheating in the short term can have long-term repercussions when they are asked to apply information with an incomplete understanding. I was extremely glad to have Kerry there. A number of instructors in the circle affirmed her observations about students using or abusing extra time. At the same time, we could all agree that: “there are no magic wands” and one-size does not fit all. However, as instructional faculty and faculty support, we needed to “find ways forward”. Then we shifted gears to discuss some solutions. Finding Ways Forward
At this point Mabyn was able to share some of the ways that the faculty at Lakeland have responded to the need reality of online assessment. Some instructors at Lakeland had success with open-book and oral exams. It was a big shift away from the typical battery of 200 multiple-choice questions. The success of open book exams had much to do with the structure of them and the challenge found in them. Students were given a set block of time (a day?) to explore questions that spoke to the big questions of the course and their program. In oral exams, with some carefully crafted questions and strategic probing, instructors could find out very quickly who knew and could make connections, and who could not. Some of the instructors Mabyn worked with also had success in constructing case-study types of questions that required longer answer responses. In all three cases, making sure that the marking criteria (rubrics) are clear was essential. One instructor shared that, after conducting these new assessments, he had a much better picture of “who got it” than he did from the old multiple-choice exams. He could see how students were intersecting ideas and applying them. Some of the other suggestions shared during the session for addressing the challenge of online assessment (and even the UDL 1.5 requirement) included:
Last week I shared some handy websites from Taylor Institute (U of C). Here are a couple of others that people shared on Friday. Websites: https://learninginnovation.ca/student-cc/ (Lethbridge College Centre for Teaching and Learning) https://sites.tufts.edu/teaching/2020/05/08/integrating-inclusive-and-sustainable-assessments-in-your-online-teaching-from-beginning-to-end/ (Teaching and Learning at Tufts University) https://teaching.uwo.ca/elearning/student_assessment/alt-assessment-ideas.html (Centre for Teaching and Learning – Western Ontario) Have a wonderful week. I’m going out to play with my puppies! Jeff
0 Comments
|
AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|