Projects as Formal Assessment

In my last post I shared how I hope to use screencasting on a regular basis (maybe weekly) for formal assessment. I think I can be successful with this since it will become a routine where students improve as the year progresses. And screencasting builds all sorts of skills in addition to just content. There are technology skills of course, but there is also a speaking and writing component as well as planning. 

However, I think I’d most like to include more authentic assessments and projects. These make great online assessments because the solutions are not Googleable and every student will come up with a different solution.  I’m lucky that I typically teach content that lends itself well to this type of assignment.  I teach statistics and consumer math.

For statistics, I can ask learners to create visual data displays and run inference tests by choosing a random sample from a larger provided data set.  Statistics problems are great because you can do so much with just one set of data and the focus is on interpretation rather than calculation.  The accuracy is easy enough for me to check with technology if I have students submit their random samples.  That frees me up to read and give feedback on their interpretations.  Our LMS (Schoology) even had the option to leave feedback as audio/video recordings or as annotations done digitally over student submissions.  These tools will allow me to be more efficient in providing feedback to students.

Here are some projects that I have done in my statistics courses in the past that could be done digitally in place of a traditional exam.  Many of these projects are modified from ones shared by other teachers on social media.  I can’t take credit for them :)

Ch 1 Project: Analyzing One Variable Data

Ch 2 Project: Justice League z-scores

Ch 3 Project: Investigating Relationships

Ch 4 Project: Response Bias

Ch 5 Project: Designing a Game

Ch 7 & 10 Project: Sampling Distributions Board Game

Ch 8 - 12 Project: Inference 

And, you can find some great resources for consumer math projects at Next Gen Personal Finance. I’ve used these resources to have students write resumes & cover letters as well as complete calculations related to paying off loans & credit card balances.

This checking project is from a coworker of mine. And I’ve also used Wall Street Survivor to simulate investing. 

During a normal face-to-face course, I would include a presentation piece for all of these assignments.  That could still be accomplished by having students create videos or even just slides presentations with voice overs.

I’m currently in search of some algebra 1 projects similar to these, where each final product would be unique. So send those my way if you come across them.  As usual, I’m open to questions, comments, and compliments :)

Student-Created Screencasts for Assessment

Just over a year ago I was tasked with creating an online algebra 1 course for my school.  I’m finishing that up now. One of the portions of the course that I’ve been putting off until the end is assessment.  I have already built in a lot of self-checking and automatic digital feedback.  I’ve utilized online resources like Khan Academy and IXL where possible. If I was unable to find what I needed, I created practice tasks in Quizizz, Quizlaize, Desmos, and other platforms.  The thing that has stumped me the most is formal assessment.  This is especially relevant now, teaching during a pandemic.

I think the root of the problem is that some math teachers, myself included, have overly relied on poor/easy summative assessment methods.  It’s so simple to write and grade multiple-choice, fill in the blank, and free-response questions that have only one correct answer.  Many of my tests were no more than the same types of Khan Academy and IXL questions but on paper. I pondered over how I could create assessments for algebra 1 that could be meaningful.  How can I prevent learners from ‘cheating?’  We all know that students are using apps (photo math, mathway, cymath, etc) to solve problems for them. How can I prevent kids from using these tools on an online test measuring DOK 1 skills?  How can I prevent kids from having someone else take the online test for them?  How can I prevent kids from googling the answers to the test?

The answer is that I can not prevent any of this. These tests will be taken in unsupervised settings.  The problem is not the learner, but the assessment tool.  Here are a few ideas that I have considered.

1) Have students use a lockdown browser to complete the assessment.

This method would keep an honest student honest.  There is nothing to stop the learner from accessing another device (phone, personal laptop) while taking my test on their school-issued device.  Additionally, the software that my school uses to monitor and block content can only be used during the regular school day (M-F from 7 am - 3 pm on 180 days from late August through early June).  The course is meant to be asynchronous, so there is a lot of time on the clock when I have no ability to monitor students.

2) Set time limits on the test so that students don’t have time to look-up answers.

This would work a bit better, but I don’t love the idea. In the classroom, I’ve always tried to allow plenty of time for all students to finish the assessment.  I’ve aimed at writing assessments that I think should take 30 minutes to complete, but allow 90 minutes so that everyone has all the time they need.  I’m not a fan of timed tests in general.  And of course, there are concerns for IEP accommodations here.

3) Require students to turn on the cameras of their school device and submit a screencast (including their faces) of themselves taking the test.

This is another improvement.  Kids could still use other devices and they could edit the video before uploading it.  Also, we use free screencasting tools that are limited to 15 minutes in length. So learners would need to submit multiple videos.

So here is what I’m now aiming for.  My goal is to create very short formal assessments each week.  The process of viewing and providing feedback for these weekly assessments will be very time-intensive, but it should be doable by providing most of the informal assessment in self-checking formats.  I’d like to lean heavily on screencasting a single solution, with a time limit of 60 seconds (or maybe two minutes tops). I’m expecting to have as many as 150 learners to provide weekly feedback, so keeping the time limit low will be important.  

I’m hoping that for algebra 1, I can find worksheets or textbook problem sets with many problems.  I could assign each student a different problem and they could each submit a screencast of themselves showing and explaining their solution.  By limiting the time to 1-2 minutes, students would need to rehearse their submissions.  I’m thinking that I would be able to get a good idea of their understanding based on these video explanations.

I’ve got some ideas for the more complicated topics and higher DOK levels that I’ll blog about in the near future.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your ideas for formal assessment in an asynchronous online setting.  Share your questions, comments, and compliments :)

Practice Structures: Quiz Quiz Trade

Another of my favorite practice structures is Quiz Quiz Trade.  I believe that  Quiz Quiz Trade originates as a Kagan strategy, but I’m not sure.  This practice structure works best for knowledge level questions as well as fact fluency type questions.  This is basically a fun way to use flashcards.

To create my own, I start by finding appropriate questions and type them in a google doc in such a way that the questions and answers will end up back to back when printed as 2 sides copies.

Here’s how it works:  Have pairs of learners evenly split the deck of flashcards.  Partner A holds up the cards so that partner B can read them.  The solutions are on the back of the cards, so the activity is self-checking.  The partners take turns working their way through the flashcards and then they swap cards and practice answering the other half of the questions.  Encourage learners to discuss questions that are missed.

Here are a few Quiz Quiz Trade decks to get you started.

As always, I welcome your questions, comments, and compliments :)

Statistics

Describing Scatter Plots

Confidence Intervals for Means

Simulations

Sampling Distributions

Writing Hypotheses

Experiments and Studies