When Assessments Smother Learning

Last week, I was reaching the end of a unit on forces. We did a few hands-on labs and the centerpiece of the unit was a maker activity in which students designed and built chariots for Spheros that could carry a passenger of at least 200 grams. They then had to program the Sphero to make 3 loops around a small track in the shortest amount of time while still carrying the rider.

So when the activity was over, it was time to think of the unit assessment. I spent a day coming up with several different options for learners to investigate forces or come up with examples or find videos from YouTube and apply Newton’s 3 laws to them. That’s when I realized I was ignoring what was in front of my own face.

My students were highly engaged in the Sphero activity. Why was I trying to create a whole new scenario when I could use this highly motivational activity to frame the summative assessment? It made me think, how often am I forcing learners to lose the momentum of a positive learning experience with a disconnected assessment? When learners are highly engaged in an activity, they are primed to be curious, make connections to content, and discuss their observations and conclusions. So for this unit’s assessment, I’m asking learners to apply Newton’s 3 laws of motion to their Sphero Chariots.

This got me thinking, “How often am I creating a situations in which the assessment is working against learning?”

In some cases, I may not be using the momentum of an activity to provide an assessment opportunity. There are other situations where I consider the mode of an assessment. How often is the assessment document creating and obstacle between myself and the learner’s communication of understanding? Too often when students are taking a test, I find myself sitting at a desk and grading a test that a student just handed in 10 minutes ago. Why am I letting this piece of paper be the form for communicating understanding between the learner and myself. We are in the same space at the same time. Seems odd when you think about it outside of trying to be efficient with time. If summative assessments are meant to be the end measure of mastery, why is efficiency valued over accuracy?

In a previous post, I mentioned the idea of objective mastery defenses. This is when a student puts together a presentation to defend the fact that they have mastered the unit outcomes. The original goal was to remove the text anxiety that some students may feel, especially for those students not intending to take the AP test. But, it has become way more meaningful than that. It has become a great option for ALL of my learners from my co-taught physics class (in which ⅓ of the students have IEPs) to my AP Physics 2. Why? It builds verbal communication and building effective presentations, skills more highly sought after than test taking. It forces students to speak conversationally about these complex concepts in their own words. One other great side effect, it helps build that relationship between the learner and myself without a test becoming the middleman.

Now, this doesn’t mean that test taking won’t be a skills some of my learners will need. Nor do I want to stop learners from creating their own products for assessments. But, it’s causing me to rethink the idea of what we do with our time together and how so often we time shift communication in a summative assessment using traditional testing strategies. The recognition of Anytime, Anywhere Learning is an element that has been identified by the Institute for Personalized Learning. It is something that I hope to embrace more in my classroom. The biggest hurdle to this is not measurement of mastery or opportunities to demonstrate. It is a logistical issue dealing with management of records.

I hope to continue to challenge my assessment processes to increase real time communication between learners and myself when the assessment format isn’t embedding other key skills.