Assessment From a Distance: Challenges and Possibilities

Article

“Can I take an AR quiz now?” We had just finished reading Scythe by Neal Shusterman together. “That’s fine; mind if I watch as you take it?”

I grabbed a notebook and pen from my office and then read each question as he completed the quiz on a Chromebook. What I was interested in was, at what level of cognition were the questions? Were students asked to recall only events from the story (low level) or guided to think more deeply about the text (moderate to high)?

I was disappointed yet not surprised, given my experience with this assessment tool. Here is my analysis of this one Accelerated Reader quiz, using Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Question 1: Low level – Remember

• Question 2: Low level – Remember

• Question 3: Low level – Remember

• Question 4: Low level – Remember

• Question 5: Low level – Remember

• Question 6: Low level – Remember

• Question 7: Low level – Remember

• Question 8: Low level – Understand

• Question 9: Low level – Understand

• Question 10: Low level – Remember

(And in case you were wondering: Yes, I am self-aware enough to recognize the level of nerd I have reached when I am analyzing my son’s reading assessment questions. :-)

There are many problems with this situation, beyond the lost opportunity of enriching a student’s understanding of this excellent, complex text. I would like to go over a few of the most pertinent issues. But I also want to balance these challenges with rethinking what’s possible with assessment from a distance.

Three Challenges

A first (and fairly obvious) challenge with using assessments like AR quizzes from a distance is the assumption that every student has appropriate access - to technology, to the content, and to effective instruction.

Access to cognitively challenging tasks is obviously a concern, shown previously. What are we preparing students for with a mental diet of instructional junk food?

I can also attest to the diverse levels of digital access. Students’ learning environments are contingent of the places they call home. In addition, so much of teacher-to-student, in-person interaction is what drives the more formative, responsive instruction which we know is highly effective. Posting video tutorials online and responding to work via comments can be helpful, but it’s not the same.

So when we administer assessments like the one my son took, we should question the results and hold them with a grain of salt. Their reliability, already low, is even less due to the disparate conditions in which our students are asked to learn.

A second challenge is the message we are communicating with these types of assessments in our circumstances. I am not referring to the format. Although problematic in suggesting there is one right response when reading and comprehending a text, what I am referring to is the value we are subtly placing on reading when the only way to communicate our understanding is through low-level questions.

No one in the world reads a book to take a quiz, that is unless they attend schools that expect students to do so. Yet reading flourishes in the real world. Each person’s purpose for reading is nuanced yet almost always meaningful. If that experience is valuable, then shouldn’t we also assess whether or not a student reads with purpose and for personal meaning?

This isn’t too hard to do. Example: pose a few constructed response questions in Google Forms, or maybe better, host a Flipgrid in which every student shares their thinking about the book they are reading right now. Purpose and meaning are a priority when we actualize it in our teaching and assessing practices.

A final challenge I see with assessing from a distancing is how outdated the ways of thinking about assessment have become apparent now that we are teaching and learning remotely.

Traditional schools of thought position the teacher as assessor and the students as the assessed. The adult determines the level of proficiency of a child.

Distance learning has forced everyone to reconsider this practice. Teachers can no longer say for certain that a student has reached a standard of success. And how could they, considering that instruction is now being mediated through the Internet, an additional obstacle for almost anyone.

We must give up much of the control with teaching and learning online. In fact, I think this is what might be holding up a few of us: control. Some already feared losing this in the classroom. Now that the classroom as we know it does not exist right now, what do we do? For a few, they double down and start issuing reams of packets or assigning basic questions to feel some semblance of control over the outcomes.

Our new reality has wrenched control from educators; it’s now primarily in the hands of the students.

A Possibility

New ways of thinking about assessment are not new. Thought leaders and researchers such as W. James Popham, Sheila Valencia, Grant Wiggins and Dylan Wiliam have outlined clear practices and approaches for shifting the assessment work to the students.

In a favorite visual that I reprinted with permission in my last book on digital portfolios, Popham shows how students should gradually become the primary assessors in the classroom.

What I appreciate most about this visual is that it honors an educator’s journey toward these more promising assessment practices. Popham recognizes that this shift toward more formative assessment – assessment for learning - doesn’t happen overnight. It takes trial and error, reflection and renewal, and a willingness to put our students’ needs over our own discomfort.

How do we start this shift? Begin with where we are at and move toward a next step that we feel confident in at least trying. Considering the following suggested pathway toward a more authentic assessment process for student response to their reading.

In fact, my son’s teacher did just that and set up a discussion for them today in a Google Hangout to talk book. Listening in from the kitchen while I was making dinner, his enthusiasm for sharing was matched by his clear understanding of Scythe.

We have the time, the technologies (sans access issues), and the permission with testing waivers to try these practices out with our students. Be honest with everyone – especially ourselves - that there will be mistakes made. If we are already expecting errors, then we can address them as learning opportunities.

For the month of April, in response to the pandemic all posted content will be available to everyone - no paywall. Feel free to share this article with colleagues!