Time is always the greatest limiting factor for teachers. When I am presenting about educational science at workshops and conferences, one of the most common questions I receive is, “How do you find the time to rate students’ attainment of each learning goal?” I reply with the words of John Delano, professor emeritus in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at SUNY University at Albany, “I do not have the time to not do assessment!” There is no doubt that it takes more time to assess student attainment of learning goals than to simply generate grades. The problem is that a quiz grade does not tell me anything about what the students are learning. I do not have time, in class or out of class, to waste on a quiz that will only generate a grade. I need to know what the students are learning so I can make my next move in planning instruction!
Recently I administered and scored an assessment relating to MS-LS1-2 in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). While I was scoring it I found that, by comparing my students’ work to rubrics, I was learning what my students know and how they communicate. I was also learning about the quality of my assessment task and instruction. It was the thinking involved in the process of scoring that gave me insight into what my students did and did not know. This activity revealed the nuances of how they responded to prompts and how they interpreted prompts. I began to know and understand these students more deeply. As I rated their work, I recorded their rating for each learning goal in my gradebook* and reported their ratings to them.
Unfortunately, the students saw their ratings as abstractions. They could not connect the numbers representing their levels of attainment of learning goals to their work or to their learning. The result was that students either showed apathy or inaction toward their ratings or, if students wanted to improve their ratings, I would have to undergo the time consuming process of unpacking the rating by returning to the student work. In other words, it was difficult to give students feedback, and feedback is critical to learning. Time is the most valuable commodity in education. I am always looking for more efficient ways of meeting my goals. And the process I described above is not efficient. What if the feedback and rating could be wrapped in one act and enriched by developing the critical capability of self assessment.
To achieve this goal of efficiency I use a technique called guided self assessment. In guided self assessment I, the teacher, lead the students through the process of assessing their own work. I do this by returning the assessment task to students, then one by one explaining how I would rate each learning goal, giving examples of student responses that would demonstrate each level of attainment on a rubric. I encourage students to ask questions if they are unsure of their rating and often episodes of instruction spontaneously arise based on identified misconceptions. Through this process students are able to analyse their own responses and evaluate the degree to which their responses represent a targeted level of attainment. Students are able to connect their level of attainment of a particular learning goal to their own work and receive immediate feedback. Once students are confident in their rating, they record it in the appropriate place for the learning goal.
If the assessment was completed on a paper document, I hand my students a red pen to write on their assessment and record their ratings on a table on the front page of the assessment. If the assessment was completed digitally, I have the students fill out a Google Form that lists learning goals and has a rubric for each. In either case I can then collect the students’ ratings to enter into my information system.
I have been finding guided self assessment to be valuable to the point that it has become my preferred method of rating student work. I consider my task as a teacher to be helping students attain learning goals. While I consider guided self assessment to be an efficient tool for collecting assessment data from large numbers of students, it also provides timely feedback to students and the opportunity for them to reflect on their own learning and communication skills. It gives them more ownership over their learning. It also gives teachers timely feedback on what students are learning, and frees up time to plan instruction based on that feedback.
So why isn’t everyone doing this? The question most teachers ask when I talk about self assessment is, “How reliable are the student ratings?” Students could have unreliable ratings for a variety of reasons including dishonesty, misunderstanding the teachers’ rubrics, misunderstanding instructions, hastiness, and others. In a coming post we will attempt to answer the question of reliability by reporting on a reliability study of student ratings from a guided self assessment event.
*I am presently using my district managed student information system or “gradebook” as an information system for tracking student attainment of learning goals. This serves the dual purpose of providing my district with the grades they require and providing me with a record of my students’ capabilities.