The idea is not to grade students on assignments, concerts, or projects but instead by to assess whether they have reached, exceeded, or have failed to reach outcomes. Genius!! Whoever thought of this deserves a gold star! Not only does this provide teachers with a method to justify their marks but it also moves away from teachers handing out percentage based marks that could have easily been 5% either way of the given mark. With this idea you can look through all of the different outcomes and say that this student is either meeting or not meeting these outcomes quite definitively (some people may include exceeding and other stages too). If our jobs are to teach the curriculum then we would probably assume that it is the job of a student to learn the curriculum. If this is the case (and some people may say that it is not) then why would we not assess and grade based on the curriculum? To me it seems obvious. However, maybe I'm missing something.
The whole point of me bringing this method of assessment up is that I had been functioning under a bias that I did not know that I had. I was working with a bias that had me believing that assignments were just a thing that we teachers hand out in order to give our students marks and that these assignments were out of a certain amount marks simply based on how much work that was needed to be done to complete them well. I had been functioning under this bias because, as far as I could tell, many teachers that I had functioned under the same one and used marks simply as a tool to assign us grades so that they could keep their jobs- I hope that this was not the case.
After reflecting on realizing my bias towards evaluation I did come to the conclusion that there are so many things that we teachers do for reasons that I don't really understand. Meaning that I must always be thinking critically and challenging what I do believe and why I believe it. Sometimes we think that we have the whole picture figured out but it always seems to turn out that we really don't. We may have a photograph that looks good from far away but is missing pixels when you look up close. Or you may have a picture of something that is put together quite well but then you realize that it is all part of a larger puzzle and that some pieces just aren't making sense. This evaluation method was not only an awesome skill to learn but it was also a good reminder that we never really know everything about anything- even if we are trying to learn about ourselves.
Lesson for the week: There are many great ideas that are waiting for us to simply challenge our own thinking and functions in order to find them.
Great post! I actually have the same "light-bulb" moment last year as well! I am now in the Evaluation & Assessment class and have taken a few PD sessions on the new provincial report card and my views of assessment have been modified again so I am still trying to figure it all out though.
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome! Yeah, I just get stoked whenever I hear of these ideas that people have developed. Especially when it challenges a bias that I never even knew that I had! I'm really looking forward to all of the things that I learn at school these next two years.
ReplyDeleteHow would you assess whether an outcome had been completed or not without falling back on more traditional means of assessment?
ReplyDeleteUnless there's some new (or significantly modified) method of assessment, it doesn't that this would significantly impact the students. Although I may be missing the point about outcome based classrooms and this is actually about the teacher's understanding of the curriculum. In that it makes focusing on the most important concepts in the curriculum much easier, in which case the question is nonsensical.
I don't think that students would really know that you were using this type of assessment unless you really made it clear to them. For example, if a teacher were to plan out the year and give the students 3 chances to prove that they know a concept/ have met an outcome (once in a lab write-up, once in a project, and once in a unit test) the teacher would be able to fairly assess the student on their understanding of curricular objectives. This would mean that instead of giving assignments random amounts of marks (i.e. 10 marks for participation, 30 marks for demonstrating a physical concept, and 10 marks for creativity) you can then look at your assignments and see what outcomes can be met by completing them. Then, for every outcome that can be met, you would either give the student a 1 or a 0 for having met or having not met the outcome (that is if you want to assign a number to the grade).
ReplyDeleteYou could also say that every course is worth a number of marks equal to the number of outcomes that are outlined in the curriculum. Then, as students do assignments and show that they have met outcomes you can give them a "Meets Outcome"/1 mark for that outcome. However, it is true that old-school methods of seeing whether a student has reached this outcome or not may still be present.
The conclusion that I had come to in this post was that teachers don't need to assign marks at random or weigh tests, assignments, participation, and exams at random either. Instead they will assign marks based on the outcomes that are covered. This provides teachers with a logical method of assigning/creating marks.
Although this system is logical it can also be considered fair by providing students with multiple chances to meet these outcomes. If a student gets 3/3 or even if they represent their knowings in their last two evaluations it shows that they are meeting expectations. Meaning the importance is put on learning the content and not simply how fast one can learn the content.
If I understand your question, you are saying that teachers should also use new methods of assessing whether or not a student has met these outcomes on top of using this outcome-based evaluation- I would agree with this statement. If one's method of using the outcome-based evaluation is through fill-in-the-blanks or multiple choice questions, in which students could stumble upon the correct answer, then I would say that you may need to rethink your evaluation methods.
In the end, I feel like I am benefiting most by thinking from the stand-point provided by curricular outcomes because it gives me a reason for providing the marks that I do. You are right though, the question then becomes: What is the most accurate way to evaluate the students? Which I would have guesses at, but I really haven't reached a conclusion on that one yet. Well, not one that I can heavily support that is also inclusive of all types of students and learners.
Great question though Andrew! I will make sure that I think about that one and get back to you when I have a better answer.
I think it is a great idea you write down something to remember at the end of each post.
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