Evaluation of Student Learning - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Evaluation of Student Learning

Third Summer Leadership Institute

Amherst, MA

Center for School Counseling Outcome Research

• How do we know that students have learned what we intended or hoped they would?
• What types of learning are you looking for on Bloom’s taxonomy?
• What will you accept as evidence of learning?
• What is evidence of mastery?
• Do you want all students to reach mastery? Some percentage?

• Feedback to students
• Feedback to teachers
• Feedback to parents
• Information for selection and certification
• Information for accountability
• Information to increase student effort

• Evaluation must matter or be important to students (parents care or college admission)
• Evaluation must be tied to actual performance (honest, objective measures)
• Consistent standards (fair and equal)
• Clear criteria (how to get a good grade)
• Reliable interpretations of evaluations
• Frequent evaluations (quizzes rather than finals)
• Challenging evaluations (hard, but impossible for none; compare students to own past performance)

• Selected-response-format (multiple choice, true-false) tests and quizzes
• Written responses to academic prompts (short-answer format)
• Extended written products (essays, papers, lab reports)
• Visual products (PowerPoint, mural)
• Oral performances (oral report, world language dialogue, debate)

• Student demonstrations (athletic skills, music performance, role plays)
• Long-term authentic assessment projects (exhibit)
• Portfolios
• Reflective journals or learning logs
• Informal observations of students

• Formal observations of students using observable indicators
• Student self-assessment
• Peer reviews and peer response groups
• Questions in class-- learning probes

• Encouraging Self-Evaluation: p. 223
• Questioning for Understanding: p. 156
• Performance Task Scenarios: p. 172
• Possible Products and Performances: p. 174
• Generic Rubric for Understanding: p. 193

• Rubrics for Generic Information, Generic Procedures, Problem Solving, Decision Making: pp. 192-193, 215, 226, Handbook for Classroom Instruction
• Model for Decision Making: p. 221, Handbook for Classroom Instruction

Start with what you want students to know and to be able to do at the end of the lesson.

These are the learning or instructional objectives, and the assessment needs to be directly linked to them.

• What we want students to know:

Vocabulary, Terminology, Definitions

Key factual information

Critical details

Sequences

Concepts

• What do we want students to be able to do:

Basic skills – math, reading

Communication skills – listening, speaking, writing

Thinking skills – compare, infer, analyze, interpret

Research, investigation skills

Study skills

Interpersonal and group skills

• Assessment and evaluation of learning is a snapshot of what is learned (except alphabet and math facts) – there is no way to fully represent or measure all the learning that has occurred. SO, of all the things learned, what do we want to demonstrate to selves, students, parents was the outcome?

Need to start with identification of what students already know. What are their existing understandings, skills, interests?

Can ask, “Why do you think this is important to know?” “Why do you think we are studying this?” “What do you already know about this?”

Diagnostic assessment precedes instruction, and identifies:

• students’ prior knowledge
• misconceptions
• interests
• learning-style preferences

Examples: pre-tests, student surveys, skills check

Formative Assessment is ongoing, informal checks for understanding during the curriculum implementation, and provides:

• Information to guide teaching
• Feedback for pacing
• Information about how to improve student performance

Resource: p. 234 Understanding by Design

Summative assessment follows instruction, and identifies:

• Students’ level of mastery
• Student proficiency

Examples: post-tests, performance task, culminating project, portfolio

• Performance goals and standards are clear
• Diagnostic assessments check for prior knowledge, skill level, and misconceptions
• Students demonstrate their understanding through real-world applications
• Assessment methods are matched to achievement targets

• Assessment is ongoing and timely
• Learners have opportunities for trial and error, reflection and revision
• Self-assessment is expected

• Worth being familiar with
• Assess using traditional quizzes and tests
• Important to know and do
• Assess using both traditional methods and performance tasks and projects
• Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings
• Assess using performance tasks and projects
• Complex, open-ended, authentic assessment

• Authentic or Performance Assessment: Students are asked to demonstrate that they can do something real with the information and skills they have learned.
• Portfolios
• Write letters to the editor or a school newspaper
• Write and illustrate a book for the classroom
• Build scale models
• Perform for an audience
• Perform an experiment

• Specify in advance the type of performance expected
• Need to ensure that the scoring system is clear to students
• See rubric examples from UbD

• Performance assessments are challenging to evaluate objectively
• Evaluation outcomes seem to depend on the type of performance as much as the skills of the learner
• Student evaluation scores have been more related to student aptitude than to what students were taught
• Scoring rubrics can enhance achievement

1. Identify desired results: If we want the learners to understand that:

• Friendship demands honesty
• True friendship is often revealed during hard times
• It is sometimes hard to know who your true friends are

2. Identifyacceptable evidence of knowledge:

What must students be able to explain, justify, support, or answer about their work for us to infer genuine understanding?

What would enable us to infer students’ understanding of what they have learned?

Possible assessment of understanding of friendship (elementary level):

• Order a friend from a catalog: what qualities should your friend have?
• Dear Abby: Give advice to someone who lied to a friend.
• Develop a brochure for younger students to help them know who their true friends are.
• Explain who your friends are and why they are your friends.

Possible assessment of understanding of friendship (elementary level):

• Describe the qualities of a true friend. Justify the qualities you selected.
• Create a comic strip or book to illustrate friendship qualities and friendly behaviors.
• Tell or draw a story showing what happens when two friends don’t see eye-to-eye.
• Respond to quotes about friendship (e.g. “A friend in need is a friend indeed”)

• Using the pedagogical cycle already developed for SSS, identify several ways you could assess student learning. Revise your learning objectives if necessary.
• What authentic assessments could you use?
• What rubric(s) would you use?
• What are 3 short, key pre-test/post-test questions you could ask?

Thank You

www.cscor.org