PLO 6 & 7

Week Four Assignment: PLO 6 & 7 Redesign

Dyane Plumly

EDU697

Dr. Philip Orlando, Ed. Spec

July 21, 2014

Introduction

The assignment that I have elected to redesign to match Program Learning Outcome 6 to “technology resources to facilitate effective assessment and evaluation” and Program Learning Outcome 7 “Utilize technology to collect and analyze data, interpret results, and communicate findings” is the EDU652 final assignment. In this course, Instructional Design and Delivery, we heavily focused on instructional design, but the unit that I designed focused very little on the assessment or the data collection, particularly with a technology focus. I elected to use this assignment in my redesign because it is a unit I actually taught and would like to rework for future teaching. Most importantly, this unit focused on creating argumentative essays (which is a major standard that is being pushed in my district), and hence, an area that I’d like to ensure I am assessing effectively to ensure student success. In this narrative, I have also included a discussion regarding the instructional design principle and theory that aligns with the use of technology for assessment and evaluation, as well as data collection, and a reflection on the challenges of this redesign work.

Principles & Theory

Instructional design principles and theory heavily influence how to use effective assessment and evaluation tools, particularly with the use of assessment. Throughout the past nine courses in our MATLT program, we have learned that there are many forms of assessment and evaluation that are used in the classroom.

According to McDavid, Huse & Hawthorne (2013), evaluation is “a structured process that creates and synthesizes information intended to reduce the level of uncertainty for decision makers and stakeholders about a given program or policy.” Assessment is a tool used to give feedback, set standards, evaluate progress, and motivate performance (Edutopia Staff, 2008). The difference between these two can be viewed in that evaluation is more specifically regarding a summative evaluation and assessments are used to monitor progress. As a classroom teacher, the key for me is understanding where my students are and what I need to do in order to get them to the objective I have outlined. In my redesign, using technology to gain formative assessments was the critical area of focus for me.

Similar to my own practice, Newby, Stepich, Lehman, Russell & Ottenbreit-Leftwich (2011) defined assessment as “the process of gathering evidence of what learners know and can do.” Thus, assessment is an ongoing process. According Newby, Stepich, Lehman, Russell & Ottenbreit-Leftwich (2011), there are three critical components that must be considered in the evaluation process:

1. Continuous improvement requires continuous information,

2. Encourage and teach students how to evaluate for themselves, and

3. Information will carry more weight when it has been “triangulated” or based on many sources. Newby, Stepich, Lehman, Russell & Ottenbreit-Leftwich (2011) describes triangulation as the process of obtaining information from multiple techniques or sources. Triangulation offers reliability when considering what students have learned, as it may offer opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning through more than one path or assignment.

Even more so, assessment is both summative and formative. In my teaching experience, I have understood formative assessment to aligned with what Bedard-Voorhees, Johnson, and Dobson (2011) refer to as “those that are done during a course activity that help students improve skills and knowledge needed to meet objectives." Summative assessments are more final and determine a student’s learning or mastery at the conclusion of a unit, semester, year, etc. Bedard-Voorhees, Johnson, and Dobson (2011) also specifically discuss how technology has shaped how educators may have seen traditional assessments. Dabbagh (2006) claims that the instructional “focus is on the process not the product.” In this Constructivism approach, the example in Figure 6 of Bedard-Voorhees, Johnson, and Dobson (2011), in which the Bloom’s taxonomy shows varying levels of assessment through technology, it is truly highlighted how technology changes the way in which assessment must be viewed.

For me, as an educator, this is exemplified in the way in which I assess students - that learning is no longer about what they necessarily have memorized, but whether or not they know how to access the information that they seek and determine its credibility. I think this view of assessment is also aligned with the new Common Core standards, which are much more interested in determining student’s ability to argue and access knowledge. In the past, my students have always taken standardized tests that I had to prepare them for. This created a rather distinct gap between the activities, discussions, and projects that I enjoyed having in my class and the quick drill camps that I would set up in weeks prior to the CAHSEE (my school has us do CAHSEE camps in order to help students pass their high school exit exam). However, as we have started to do field tests of the Smarter Balanced assessments, I have realized that these new tests have students work on fewer problems but with much more depth and analysis to each one. Although I am struggling with the implementation and the rigor of Common Core with my students (at the high school level, I have many resistant and asking for multiple choice), I like this type of evaluation. In the original assignment, the objective is for students to be able to annotate, summarize, and respond to a text in order to identify and understand an author’s argument. This is a small component of the overall learning that students will do throughout the year, but serves as part of the process to deeper, more thorough learning.  

Redesign

In my original assignment, I noted that the gap that my students would experience with their current state of knowledge and the skills that we are building toward was understanding argument and how evidence is used to support that argument. I had recently completed a similar activity to this that had students write argumentative essays, but students struggled to effectively understand the author’s argument and use evidence to support their own opinions. In the instructional activity, there is a large emphasis on annotating and summarizing. In previous work, my students felt that summarizing was a skill that they had mastered, but their summaries simply reflected many opinions and irrelevant information about the article. In this part of the activity, which supports the objective of understand an author’s argument, I want to students to “be able to suspend [their] own beliefs for a time and put [themselves] in the shoes of someone else” (Graff and Birkenstein, 2010, p. 31). In this way, they will learn what “they say” before we begin the process of writing rhetorically in what “I say.”

In this redesign, I will use the summaries of the previous unit and grade it according to a specific rubric (shown in original assignment). This will be used as a formative assessment to assess the needs of each student. By assessing the need of each student, “Rather than simply "teaching to the middle" by providing a single avenue for learning for all students in a class, teachers using differentiated instruction match tasks, activities, and assessments with their students' interests, abilities, and learning preferences” (Willoughby, 2000-2005). This pre-assessment process allows the educator to get to know the students, a critical aspect of formative assessments (Willoughby, 2000-2005).

In the original assignment, the only discussion of the assessment of student learning was that students would show an understanding of the author’s argument through their annotations, summary, and response. There was no discussion of technology and its potential effectiveness in assessment. In the redesign, Google Chrome books with reliable Internet access and Google Drive accounts will be used. These classroom materials not only assist the students in completing their work, but also support the teacher in order to effectively create formative assessment opportunities on the progress students are making.

Technology is a critical factor in this redesign because the use of Google Drive will allow me to work with students on both their annotations and summaries. By using a digital copy of the text that we are annotating, I will be able to model for students the work that we are doing on my own Google Drive while students are completing them in their own. Even more so, after a demo is completed, I could even synchronously work with students who might be struggling on their annotations via Google Docs. Similarly, as students as working on their summaries, I can “check in” with students both synchronously and asynchronously to determine their progress and whether or not they are meeting the stated objective.  Google Drive tools allows me to interact with the student directly over their assignment, over email, or even via chat in order to formatively assess where their current state of learning is and what I can do to offer varying levels of support to help them achieve mastery of the standard. In this way, technology is key in offering me, the teacher, moments to monitor student’s progress because it can be done simultaneously as students are completing their work. Rather than allowing a student to turn in incorrect work and have to restart the assignment the following day, I can intercept misconceptions or misunderstandings while students are in their work in order to change their course of action and create clearer learning moments.  

Challenges Experienced/Reflection

The major challenge that I experienced with this redesign mainly stemmed from a struggle to determine which assignment would benefit most from its alignment with Program Learning Outcome 6 to “technology resources to facilitate effective assessment and evaluation” and Program Learning Outcome 7 “Utilize technology to collect and analyze data, interpret results, and communicate findings.” As with the past few weeks, it is imperative to me that the work I complete for all assignments is practical and relevant to the work that I do in the classroom. Unfortunately, many of my assignments prior to EDU618, where assessment was the focus, did not include detailed descriptions of how I planned to assess my student learning – much less through the use of technology. Prior to EDU618, much of more work, as shown by the EDU652 assignment I have redesigned here, focused on instructional material and delivery via technology. Due to this, I had a large body of work to select from. In the end, the reason that I elected to choose the redesign on this Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC) is because it is a unit that I will likely repeat in the upcoming school year and it is a standard that I will definitely teach through other units. The alignment to these PLO’s also offered an opportunity for me to consider the assessment and technologies utilized for other work that my students and I are currently doing.

            Due to the fact that this unit was almost entirely completed considering only instructional materials and delivery, I almost had a blank slate to work with for the creation of assessment and technology integration. This was simultaneously a gift and a challenge. It was a gift because I didn’t have to conform new ideas to old work, but also a challenge because I had to incorporate learning from the past year and a half and integrate it into the redesign. Ultimately, this was overcome through an analysis of both the relevancy and practicality of what I could implement in my classroom and as a reflection of the skills/tools I have learned.

Conclusion

Overall, assessment and evaluation absolutely tie in with instructional theory design. In this redesign, assessment was used as both a pre and formative assessment in order to build toward greater learning. By considering the use of technology in assessments, many of these processes are streamlined and made more effective through more timely feedback and student-teacher conversations to individualize their ongoing learning. In this way, Program Learning Outcome 6 to “technology resources to facilitate effective assessment and evaluation” and Program Learning Outcome 7 “Utilize technology to collect and analyze data, interpret results, and communicate findings” benefit both educator and learner. The technology and assessment decisions made allow for student progress to be synchronously and asynchronously monitored to ensure student success and mastery for the stated objectives.

References

Bedard-Voorhees, A., Johnson, L.M., & Dobson, P. (2011). Letting them show what they know: Digital assessment strategies [Book Submission Chapter Final Version]. In S. Hirtz and K. Kelly (Eds.) Education for a Digital World 2.0, Section F: eAssessment: Measuring in Ways that Matter. British Columbia: Province of British Columbia.

Dabbagh, N. (2006). Instructional design knowledge base. Retrieved from http://classweb.gmu.edu/ndabbagh/Resources/IDKB/models_theories.htm

Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2010). The Say, I Say (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.

Newby, T. J., Stepich, D. A., Lehman, J. D., Russell, J. D., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. (2011). Educational technology for teaching and learning (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

McDavid, J.C., Huse, I., & Hawthorn, L.L. (2013). Program evaluation & performance measurement: An introduction to practice (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Why is assessment important?. (2008, July). Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/assessment-guide-importance

Willoughby, J. (2000-2005). Differentiating instruction: meeting students where they are. Retrieved from http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/subject/di_meeting.phtml