I thought that this post would have a photo of a goal… an arrival at a destination. What happens is that I just realized that now is when everything is going to begin!

My first blog was about my beliefs about assessment. So much has happened! At the beginning of the course my three beliefs about assessment were: A) When I think about assessment, I think about freedom (because of the possibilities technology offers us). B) Two worlds, two opportunities (regarding face-to-face teaching and virtual learning), and C) Culture and learning (how the culture of a student has to do with the reception of the material teached). And yes! This is true, but there is so much more to it.

As part of the course, we had to create an Assessment Design Checklist (ADC), a Formative Assessment Design, A Genre Review, an Annotated Assessment, a CMS Assessment and an Assessment Renovation. Seven units, seven challenges, an infinite knowledge.

We learned to give feedback by been given continuous feedback! And it was wonderful! Instead of being given a whole assessment, we did the ADC and the FAD step by step. So, we worked on them continuously, receiving feedback, correcting, rewriting, LEARNING! The FAD helps us define our assessment; the ADC teaches us how to evaluate our assessment – which we did – but also, we renovated an assessment with the same questions. Renovating an assessment through the ADC was not the only way we made a review; we also made a critical review about an assessment genre in a blog post and wrote blogs about the material we explored in the units. By the end of the course, we have been assessed by been learning to do the same – bit by bit. Every assignment connects with each other in some special way. We have been putting together an assessment puzzle… every piece has its purpose and perfectly fits with the other.

In addition to assessment, we studied how the politics and economical facts affects the way we assess our students. We need to go ahead of politics and designs ways of assessment that help learners to achieve more than standardized knowledge! In terms of properly assess students, a formative assessment is a way to improving our teaching methods! As Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam exposed in Inside the Black Box: raising standards through classroom assessment (1998) “Teachers need to know about their pupils’ progress and difficulties with learning so they can adapt their own work and meet pupils needs”. But what it takes to conduct a formative assessment? Without a doubt, Understanding by Design. Understanding by Design, by Jay Mctighe and Grant Wiggins, is a method for designing learning experiences. What needs to be done is to set the goal and work from within, because clarifying the goal means good design (2006).  By all means, UbD is more than just setting goals, curriculum, and assessment designs; it is a tool for the ultimate goal and within it: the student’s knowledge. 

What means to give a formative assessment? To assess and to give feedback. Feedback is information provided by an agent regarding aspects of one’s performance or understanding (Hattie & Timperley 2007) Knowing what is learned and what remains unlearned is essential to make the appropriate teaching adjustments.  The teacher’s goal is for the students to be able to transfer the information. (Bennet, 2011).

This takes us to comprehend what means to transfer information. It is the capacity of a learner to demonstrate their knowledge. As Lorrie Shepard said, contemporary learning theories (Constructivism, Cognitive Theory, sociocultural theory) share two principles: that we construct knowledge, and that learning and development are culturally embedded, socially supported processes (Shepard, 2005).  This could be synthesized in two ways of teaching: providing effective feedback, and teaching for transfer of knowledge; but for the transfer of knowledge to take place, the assessment should be designed to adapt to all kinds of learners.

On October 13, 2020 I tweeted: “Effective feedback comes when two factors meet: the teacher clarifies what is ok and what should be improved; but also, the self-assessment of the student.” As teachers, we must design for our students to self-construct their knowledge. www.twitter.com/sylviabatista7

What is a tool that can help improve our teaching standards and possibilities? TECHNOLOGY. With its affordances and constraints, technology helps us in many ways. Some affordances are the capacity to provide feedback, the possibility to reach all kind of learners (accessibility), and the marvelous idea of joining students from all over the world. In terms of constraints, an important one is the loss of privacy at the moment of virtual tests by big app companies and the moral aspects of it.

When teaching, a politically correct language, use of proper terms and concepts is necessary to guarantee a respectful atmosphere; but it is imperative that we acknowledge the implicit bias and racism that prevail in most educational systems. As Vernita Mayfield, Ph.D., explains in her book Cultural Competence Now, white scientists conducted studies theorizing white supremacy; and within this theory, a whole educational system (funds, standardized tests, curriculums) were designed.  This fact is the beginning of a broader problem as John Rosales, a Senior/Editor Writer declared in The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing (2018). After decades of research, it is well known that African American, Latino, Native American, and some Asian groups experienced bias from standardized tests and childhood educational resources. Rosales even quoted Gil Troy in his essay: The Racist Origins of The SAT, where Troy emphasizes the eugenic approach of the SAT and how the eugenic theory was dismissed after the perversion of the Nazis in World War II. 

I maintain my first three beliefs about assessment, but i am adding so much more… From design, assess, construct, setting goals, provide formative assessments, differentiate between assessment for learning, assessment as learning, and assessment of learning, being aware of our own biases, and renovate our assessment methods… everything learned has been an incredible path, for what will be an amazing teaching journey!

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. The Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139-144, 146-148.

Fisher, Z. (2017, October 9). Have we confused surveillance with assessment of student learning? [blog post]. QuickAskZoe.com. https://quickaskzoe.com/2017/10/09/have-we-confused-surveillance-with-assessment-of-student-learning/.

Leaders Project (2012). Understanding assessment: The consequences of bias. The Leaders Project at The Teachers College, Columbia University. https://www.leadersproject.org/2012/11/28/the-consequences-of-bias/. This is focused on speech and language assessments.

Molnar, A. (Ed.) (2019). Virtual schools in the U.S. 2019. National Education Policy Center.

Pellegrino, J. W., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. (2001). Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment. National Academy Press.

Shepard, L. (2005). Linking formative assessment to scaffolding. Educational Leadership, 63(3), 66-70.

I have learned so much! My first Formative Assessment Design was a simple task, with five questions answered and a lot to rewrite and rethink. For the second version of it, I added information, purpose, background… and here we are, with a final version, a polished one; with a lot of color in it (as a new color has been added every time I worked on it.

When we speak of formative vs summative assessment, a lot of traditional misconceptions arises. I strongly believe in both of them, a formative assessment, which gives the teachers the opportunity to adjust their teaching; and a summative assessment, which will provide the learner with the space to transfer knowledge. The road to summative assessment needs to be a corrective one. Only by redirecting students in the right way of learning, is that a summative assessment could be presented. To change the perceptions of summative assessment, a socio-cultural change needs to be done; and this, is extremely difficult (but no impossible), as Harrison, Konings and Schuwirth exposed in Changing the Culture of Assessment (2017).

Another new tendency is self and peer grading. I found this extremely interesting. As students engaged in self grading processes, their performance improved as a result of knowing what is expected of them versus a analysis of an internal perspective of their performance. ( Sanchez, Atkinson, Koenka, 2017) (Self-grading and peer-grading for formative and summative assessments in 3rd through 12th grade classrooms: A meta-analysis).

So, after internalizing the importance of corrective and continuous feedback, and understanding the necessity of design our assessment – UbD, and work from within the goal. And most of all, after comprehending that summative assessment is a road full of previous small formative assessments, I am ready to support my students and learn with them; because with every note sent, with every feedback given, and each step of the way I will be teaching to learn while learning to better teach.

Harrison, C. J., Könings, K. D., Schuwirth, L. W. T., Wass, V. & van Der Vleuten, C. P. M. (2017). Changing the culture of assessment: The dominance of the summative assessment paradigm. BMC Medical Education, 17(73). https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-017-0912-5

Sanchez, C. E., Atkinson, K. M., Koenka, A. C., Moshontz, H., & Cooper, H. (2017). Self-grading and peer-grading for formative and summative assessments in 3rd through 12th grade classrooms: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(8), 1049-1066. [Link to the article in the MSU Library]

I had to revise an assessment. Any assessment familiar to myself. I looked at some of the assessment engaged throughout my life as a student. I was planning to revise another assessment different from mine… that was my inicial plan; but, nevertheless, as a graduate student who plans to teach in the not too distant future, I realized that each of my steps needs to be in the right direction, toward my future students’ wellbeing. So, I took The Final Cut! and revised it with a new pair of eyes.

There are few things more frustrating than being misunderstood (Mayfield, 2020). This powerful statement explains the profound implications of living in a globalized world. With the power of technology, boundaries have been broken, and we all are a single human race; but, what happens when we don’t understand the diversity of cultures? We fear what we acknowledge as unknown, and fear can be a dangerous thing. Racism comes in different forms, and every one of those forms needs to be eradicated.

Being aware of our biases is extremely important to properly cultivate a healthy environment for our students. As teachers, we should engage in implicit bias evaluations so we can become aware of what we need to overcome and work on our biases. People are generally unaware of their implicit associations or unwilling to endorse them as indicative of their beliefs about those groups (e.g., Blair et al., 2015; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Puerto Rico is a mixed race island. We see race as a cultural phenomenon, and not as a color issue. We have a singular multicolored habitants, we are a precious color range human beings. So, as color wasn’t an implicit bias in me, the Project Implicit – from Harvard University – help me analyze my insights and revise my assessment.

The language and approach in my assessment is general and related to the course elements; but two facts became alive after the sixth unit: the probability of a cultural element that could be present in some students who differ from the Feminist Theory and/or Gender Studies and the accessibility present in the assessment for students with special needs. For the cultural element, at the beginning of the course, the students should provided their pronouns and country, as well as any important information they think the teacher should know; but a respectful and inclusive feedback is essential to guarantee the learner’s wellness and learning. Nevertheless, the accessibility of it needed some real renovations. I added general instructions and divided the questions in phases, each phase with a different color. This will help the students answer the assessment step by step – helping getting to the goal with proper feedback. Also, the assessment could be accessed using the Accessibility Tools of Word (Audio and Image Enhancer). The possibility of answering the assessment by Voice Recording is presented too, this will help students with vision and/or motor impairment.

I have a few more weeks to learn… learn to achieve, learn to teach, and teach to love!

Chapter 1 of: Mayfield, V. (2020). Cultural competence now. ASCD.

Warikoo, N., Sinclair, S., Fei, J., & Jacoby-Senghor, D. (2016). Examining racial bias in education: A new approach. Educational Researcher, 45(9), 508-514. doi:10.3102/0013189X16683408 [Link to the article in the MSU Library]

Finally, I arrived. It’s been some amazing weeks full of learning. There is a lot I have learn since my first ADC. The journey begun with two simple questions in my ADC 1.0, at my ADC 4.0 I had six questions with their respective background and evidence of understanding. I can finally say that I completely understand what is expected from me in an ADC and how to perform; but above all things, as this has been an assessment for learning, I realized how formative feedback helped me getting here. It was the compass through crossroads.

For Dylan Wiliam, co-author of the article Inside the Blackbox: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment, Formative Assessment consists of using information about students’ achievements to make adjustments to the students learning. As part of my Gender Studies, I look at movies as an essential part of society. In this context, I research the sociocultural representation of women in films. For this to be teach and learn, continuous feedback needs to be set, so the teacher could assess if the Gender Theory presented in class has been put into practice – through the analysis of films – by students. Therefore, constant feedback is essential.

But, how did I reach The Final Cut! (My film’s assessment)? I already explained my area of studies and how films have a protagonic role on it. Realizing the necessity of direction, students need to look at movies from a different perspective, a group of directed questions pop up. It was like creating special glasses for students so they can watch a movie from a different angle. But for this assessment for learning to be completed and viable, UbD was essential.

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe presented Understanding by Design, a practical method which helps us set the goal and work from it. By setting my short-term goals and my long-term goals, I worked on the actual questions my students need to address to open their minds from a Gender Studies perspective.

I would like to share with you my ADC 3.0 and next, the final questions of my ADC 4.0 Let me know what you think!

My ADC 4.0 questions are:

1. Does this assessment help the teacher to make adjustments to the students’ learning?
2. Does this assessment allow students to demonstrate their knowledge?
3. Does this assessment is accessible to all learners?
4. Does the assessment help students to check their progress?
5. Does the assessment provide space for corrective feedback or reinforcement?
6. Does this assessment reflect any bias that could be hurtful to some group of students?

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978) explains how important feedback is to meet students where they are, while also helping them get where they are supposed to be! This is fundamental in my assessment. I plan to reach this by dividing the final assessment in parts, so the students could access it step by step while every week a new movie is assign; and feedback, feedback, and more feedback so the gap between students performance and the learning goal can be closed up.

There are other important facts regarding assessments and our students wellness. For instance, the use of technology should be a tool to better teach, not a tool to invade our learners’ privacy. CMS are technology resources to meet our students, to give all of them an equal opportunity to achieve knowledge. As said before in my previous blog, if an assessment requieres students to act on their knowledge, there is simply little probability that the students will be able to execute if they haven’t learned. So, if motivation and feedback are set in, I am quite sure they will succeed.

And last, but no least. I added a question on my ADC 4.0 regarding bias and racism. Reading the Leaders Project’s Understanding Assessment: The consequences of bias, I realized bias can occur throughout the assessment process in both the evaluator as well as in testing materials. Reevaluating my assessment was an amazing journey into myself, an adventure and profound evaluation of my bias. As a Feminist Theory researcher, I looked at how a non-feminist student could feel hurt through my language. I learned as well as I intended to teach.

Now… I am ready to walk a few more steps (a few more weeks) to continue my path through assessment. Learning to teach, teaching to learn!

Let’s see a movie and learn to see the world of films from another angle!

The technology I chose as a means of evaluating my students was Google Classroom. The reasons for choosing it were based on the versatility to provide feedback and the availability to incorporate videos and digital documents that we can share.

After receiving feedback from my instructor and a peer, and taking a deeper look at my CMS, I must emphasize that a disadvantage of the platform is its inability for students with special needs to properly access the assessment. Google Classroom allows me to insert video and audio, but students with motor skills needs will need to be addressed in a different way. I must say that the feedback received from both helped me improve my CMS, looking it with a better understanding of my ADC and the purpose of the assessment.

These last months have been an amazing road to learn how to teach and assess. Feedback, technology and assessment are some of the concepts we have been addressing, performing teaching resources while learning; furthermore, we have been paving the way of assessment for learning. There is no need to explain how amazing technology is! But, what happens when technology and unethical paradigms meet?

Technology should help us address our students, it should help us meet with them, but it can’t do our job. There are ethical considerations we need to revise when teaching using technology. Shea Swauger, a librarian and Senior Instructor at the Community College of Denver, exposes in a blog how higher education are implementing algorithmic test proctoring as a strategy to prevent cheating. What makes this really alarming is the idea of how these proctoring apps uses discriminatory values to assess who is threatening and who is not. Predictive programs, developed by Big Tech companies, use algorithms that provides concrete mathematical values that can affect lives based on bias and insufficient information (O’Neil, 2016). How does math become a reliable source over a teacher’s knowledge? How could a teacher invade a student’s personal space? Some programs like Respondus offer surveillance for students’ assessments. Does this type of programs depict teaching moral integrity? How can an invasion to a student’s personal life improve the learning environment? It is simple… it does not.

Cheating is a real issue, but focusing more on motivation, strategy and feedback seems like a more realistic way to achieve the goal: the capacity of a student to transfer knowledge without cheating. In the end, if an assessment requires students to act on their knowledge, there is simply little probability that the students will be able to execute. As Douglas Harrison, vice president and dean of the University of Maryland Global Campus School Cybersecurity and Information Technology, said: Instructors should give students “scaffolded, supported opportunities at lower-stakes to practice the skills, ability and knowledge to build into the competencies.” they are expected to develop.

So, let’s teach, assess, and redirect students while they are on the road to knowledge!

We created a new assessment! We learned about CMS (Course Management Systems) and how to use them to create assessments. It is unbelievable how much we can do with technology,

For this assessment, I chose a quiz. Why? Because while reviewing my ADC questions, I planned on creating an assessment that allows me gather information regarding how much my students understands of what’s been taught.

I chose Google Classroom as my CMS because of its resources to give feedback, the versatility to assigns class work, and the possibility of the students to access the platform from almost anywhere. A Look at a Video Clip (This assessment) intends to assess the learner’s ability to transfer knowledge after being exposed to the course material and before being assess with more deep questions regarding – not a scene, but the whole film. After the assessment, I will gather important information about what the students understand and what I need to adjust to make sure they will learn the material and eventually transfer the knowledge.

An important fact is how Google Classroom help me to reach out to students with special needs. I can insert video and audio clips in the platform, and the video could be set to have Closed Captions if needed. The Google Docs allow to change the size and type of the font, insert links and provide good communication with the student.

Learning needs to be an adventure! An incredible adventure in which the learners are the protagonists of their own journey, while the teacher (instructor) works like a marvelous GPS, guiding and giving feedback of the twists and turns.

For this to come true, the instructor must adapt to the learners’ needs, and provide a proper assessment that would give continuous directions to students as they learn.

At the beginning of this journey – cause yes, this CEP813 is our own adventure, we created an Assessment Design Checklist with two questions and evidence of understanding for both.  The purpose of these questions is to guide and help us understand if an assessment is in the right track.

By this week, a total of five questions and their evidence of understanding were due. Nevertheless, a lot has changed since we start walking through the path of assessing.  We have learned about Learning by Design, Accessibility, Technology Resources, Apps and Universal Design. We learned to give corrective feedback, we learned to receive corrective feedback, we learned about formative assessments, we learned about assessments for learning and assessments of learning; and furthermore, we learned to share with our peers and instructor our thoughts, doubts and works.  I think, by learning to learn, we learned to teach.

We have been transferring our knowledge!

It’s been quite an exciting ride! Third week so far, and a lot is going on: Assessments, Designs, Feedbacks, Technology. It has been wonderful to be able to learn, share, assess, and have feedback!

At this moment, I have five questions regarding the Assessment Design:

1. Does this assessment help the teacher to make adjustment to the students’ learning?
2. Does this assessment allow students to demonstrate their knowledge?
3. Does this assessment involves a proper feedback from the teacher?
4. Does the assessment help to know how, when and why to adjust your teaching?
5. Does the assessment involves technology as a tool for feedback?

This week, I added the last three questions to my original Assessment Design Checklist 1.0 – using the lessons of Understanding by Design, Feedback and Technology.

As a student, I meet with myself in a magical path of feedback agents: my instructor, my peers, and some books that helped me clarify some concepts. As a teacher, I meet with myself in a great adventure, a one that prepares me to help my students to achieve our goal: their knowledge!

In History, the students’ training goes beyond chronological events, immersing them in the waters of historiography (the history of History). The methodology and historical studies require an analysis from the perspective of microhistory, with an emphasis on social and cultural perspectives. As part of the graduate study requirements in the University of Puerto Rico, it is necessary, at the end of the degree, to take the Masters Examination. To take it, you must enroll at the beginning of the semester and meet with two teachers from the Department who will be assigned according to your areas of emphasis. Each teacher will assign a topic to study, which will be evaluated at the end of the semester in two parts (two days – one day per topic). For each part (day) the student will be given three questions, of which two of them should be answered – one chosen by the teacher, and the other one by the student (But you should be prepared to answer all). The questions are answered in front of the teacher, in an estimated time of three hours. It is a descriptive feedback of what the students have learned.

The Masters Examination is an assessment of learning, so it did not help the teacher to adjust nor give time to change the direction in which the learning is headed.  Instead, the assessment gives descriptive feedback of what the student learned with the purpose of “accountability or to rank or certify students” (Noyce, 2011, p. 1).  The student should be able to transfer knowledge through an essay in which the topic in discussion should be approach and explain in the proper context and from within the student’s perspective.  So, the teacher lectures and involves in class discussion, and the student learned what they are asked to learn.  After the examination, the professor reads and approved or not approved the exam within the range of outstanding, pass or not-pass. 

The Master’s Examination allow students to transfer their knowledge through deep explanation while they applied what’s been learned; but as a renowned center of education, we should be able to address the fact that even if what remained unlearned could be assessed, there is no left time to change it. We are focusing just in the path and not on the goal. By the time of the assessment, there is no way to adjust any direction, nor adapt the way the information is taught/learned.

How to improve learning techniques and to approach the students’ difficulties if they can’t be assessed with enough time to addressed them? If the ultimate goal is the knowledge of the student, which assessment should be implemented? One that ranked them or one that help the cause? Jay Mc. Tighe, an education author and consultant, introduces us to Understanding by Design, which in his own words, is a framework for curriculum planning, for assessment design, and for teaching (2005). But, what does UbD can do for the Master Examination?

As UbD suggests, the teachers needs to set their goals and work from within. If the Masters Examination goal is to assessed the general knowledge from the students about their area of emphasis, then a comprehensive curriculum with a formative assessment needs to be implemented to be teaching and assess as Mc Tighe and Grant Wiggins suggested. Designing from the goal is essential to ensure the achievement of the student’s transfer of knowledge.

To turn this assessment of learning (Master’s Examination) into an assessment for learning, a one specialized question could be administered each trimester. To answered the next specialized question, the student needs to approved the previous one. The assigned teacher will evaluate the essay, and recommend any further study time or action from the student. If the student approves the specialized question, the next one could be administered by the next trimester. Each one of the questions should be answered throughout the degree, given proper time to adjust the teaching techniques and to acknowledge what has been learned and what not. The assessment and feedback could be done through the virtual scenario. Google docs is an excellent way of assessing and a great platform to address the necessary feedback.

In every good relationship, a good communication is essential to continuously obtain the feedback needed between them so the success of the relation is achieved.  There is no space for waiting until the years pass by to see if the relationship worked.  Why would it be different between a teacher and the student when what is at stake is so much? Let’s work for the love of knowledge!

Whenever we have an important event, we tend to put on paper everything that we must do for the activity to be a success. Be it the formal presentation of a project, a thesis dissertation, a surprise party, a family event… everything that represents something important in our life, has our complete dedication until we achieve the goal: for it to be excellent. How not do the same with the scholar life of our students?

On the way to creating an excellent assessment, one of the steps is create a practical checklist that will summarize the big ideas that emerge with the proper evidence. In order to approach the critical thinking that Understanding by Design proposed, several steps needs to be done. Let’s start with the checklist and see where it takes us!

“The Final Cut!” intends to introduced students to films in which behaviors and performances will be presented while they learn to watch it from a different perspective. It also relies on the ongoing exposure of the students to the model behaviors presented in the films to organize and process the previous discussion of readings, so they can retrieve the new perspectives and apply them. 

So, grab another popcorn and enjoy with me this formative assessment ride!