If we ever needed to reconsider the efficacy of using multiple-choice questions and fill-in-the-blanks worksheets for assessment, now is the time. Multiple-choice questions often don’t provide us with enough information to truly understand what our students know in deep and helpful ways. Choosing only from provided answers is limiting; in the information it provides and these types of assessments have little information about student understanding over time.
Tools to expand assessment beyond memorization and recall
Up to this point, educators have had very few ways to assess their students, so they relied on memorization and recall. But as Nancy Frey, John Hattie and Douglas Fisher assert in their book Defining Assessment-Capable Visible Learners, “Memorization and recall have their place in the cycle of learning, but rarely at the start, and certainly not at the end of learning.”
So if memorization and recall are inadequate as assessment tools, why do we still rely so heavily on them to give us an understanding of student learning?
With access to online learning devices such as Chromebooks and iPads, assessments can evolve and provide a much richer picture of student learning and growth. Our modern tools give us the ability to shift away from traditional forms of assessment. If we re-examine how we capture true knowledge and understanding from students, we have the ability to get inside every student’s mind to figure out when they know something–and when they don’t–and change instruction in real time to meet their individual needs.
“The challenge for our education system is to leverage the learning sciences and modern technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all learners that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures. In contrast to traditional classroom instruction, this requires that we put students at the center and empower them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several dimensions.” (“Transforming American Education National Education Technology Plan 2010, U.S. Department of Education”)
The multi-dimensional approach to assessment
As educators, we need to promote a more multi-dimensional approach to learning and assessment, where students look at ideas in a variety of ways, looking for patterns, connections and real-life applications.
Alane Starko, author of Creativity in the Classroom, notes that assessment that includes creativity should “provide opportunities to use content in new ways, through examining multiple perspectives, solving problems, and applying ideas in original situations.”
To gain more powerful insight into student learning, we must start by gathering information from many different sources of assessment. Some sources will (and should be) less suited for a spreadsheet and more suited for the authentic and real world, like talking through learning or debating ideas. This way, we focus on cultivating a community of learners who are empowered to make connections with what they have learned in a variety of ways. They experiment, interact and even play with the new information, making mistakes as they go, explaining their thinking as they progress.
A multi-dimensional approach can be further enhanced by layering in different types of media that allow kids to show what they know in a more complex and critical way.
Using Adobe Spark for multi-dimensional assessment — press record!
Using media to make student thinking and learning visible can be the best way to rethink assessment. It also provides students with further insight into their own learning.
Adobe Spark video — For gathering authentic learning information
Educator Lisa Highfill, co-author of The HyperDoc Handbook, shares a student example of a more traditional written assessment for analysis. As you review the sample, ask yourself these three questions:
- What grade level do you think this student is?
- What grade would you give this assignment?
- What does this assessment inform you about what Ofelia needs as a learner?
- What do you think it leaves out?
