Terry Freedman worked at QCA on assessing ICT. In this article he explores the use of Assessment for Learning techniques in ICT.
When
you raise the subject of assessing ICT most people assume you are
talking about summative assessment: that is, the awarding of a level to
a student at the end of a Key Stage. In fact, there is another kind of
assessment, and that is assessment for learning, or what used to be
generally referred to as formative assessment (although the two terms
are not synonymous).
Assessment for learning (AFL) is what goes
on -- or at least should go on -- in the classroom on a lesson by lesson
basis. And therein lies the rub. One is tempted to make the same remark
about AFL that Dr Johnson made about a dog standing on its hind legs:
the issues is not that it's done badly, but that it's done at all.
AFL
is not a single technique but, if you will, a toolkit of techniques
that you can employ in the classroom. In fact, as we'll see, there is
nothing particularly special about the techniques -- except that they
work.
The term Assessment for Learning is very revealing. It
refers to assessment that is taking place for the purpose of improving
learning. Although it's sometimes somewhat arbitrary to draw a clear
distinction between AFL and summative assessment (because one can
contribute to the other), it's worth bearing in mind that they have
very different objectives. Whereas summative assessment is employed
mainly as a means of informing a third party what the pupil knows and
understands about ICT, AFL exists for the purpose of helping the pupil
to improve that knowledge and understanding.
So what sort of AFL
techniques might be applied in the ICT classroom? What follows is a
checklist of ideas which, with some customisation on your part, could
form an assessment "menu" in your school.
Rapid feedback
•
"short, sharp" tests: a quick test on knowledge, such as terminology or
whatever, can be used to provide quick feedback to both the pupil and
the teacher.
• skills tests, or knowledge of skills tests. These
would be to test whether pupils know how to do things like change font
size. Could be either paper-based or electronic, and if the latter
could be marked automatically.
• "Awareness" tests. These to check pupils' understanding of when to apply which skills/techniques.
All
of these so far listed are for the purpose of getting fairly quick
feedback on where pupils are in terms of their basic knowledge and
understanding. They provide a kind of snapshot. The next set are more
to do with process, and ought to form part of teaching materials (in an
ideal world).
Process
• Self-assessment, including
questions like: "What do you need to do next, and what do you need to
do/learn in order to be able to achieve that?" (but expressed
differently, obviously!). It should also be reflective/dynamic. Eg,
rather than ask, "How do you think you did?", or as well as that, it
should ask "What did you do, why, how could you have done it
differently/more efficiently? etc etc)
• "Visual checks" eg
traffic light system. This consists of a list of items and 3 columns
for tick-boxes: green, amber, red. A tick in the green box means OK,
one in the amber box means "keep an eye on this" and one in the red box
means "attention needed". These visual checks could easily be
electronic, could be adapted to a variety of topics/processes/skills
and could be undertaken in 5 or 10 minutes by pupils themselves, at any
time they or their teacher felt it to be appropriate. The traffic light
system is a very good way of finding out what a pupil knows -- or think
she knows -- on a given topic. Pupils can also use it to check whether
they have the skills set they need in order to carry out the next piece
of work.
• Peer assessment, eg looking at presentations by other
pupils/groups at the end of a module or unit of work. The materials
could consist of guidelines/questions for pupils to consider. I think
there is also scope for getting pupils to work out the criteria for
themselves, because that process in itself would lead to learning (or
at least has the potential to do so).
• Guidance to pupils on
annotating their work, either electronically or on paper, and keeping
versions from draft to finished product.
• Guidance to teachers
on commenting on work rather than simply giving grades. (Interestingly
enough, it turns out that giving grades and comments is also not as
good as just giving comments.)
• Guidance to teachers on
questioning: most teachers spend most of most lessons answering
questions which they then answer themselves after just a few seconds!
Also, questions should open up knowledge and understanding, not
constitute a kind of guessing game.
• Activities that involve pupils in dialogue about their work, whether with peers or teachers.
•
Tests or activities that give an indication of level, and which can
therefore contribute to summative assessment. In this regard, the idea
would not be to take the place of summative assessment but to be able
to provide an indicator of the level a pupil is likely to obtain, other
things being equal. If the test provided a report on why the level was
indicated, it would enable a dialogue between pupil and teacher to take
place.
These are not, of course, mutually exclusive. In summary, any type of assessment for learning in ICT should:
• encourage dialogue
• encourage reflection on the process, not just the end result
• require pupil to do something, such as plan next set of skills to be learn
• facilitate annotation of paper-based work, and/or amendments and saving different versions of electronically-produced work
Where does ICT come in?
So
far, all we've looked at is a set of generic techniques which could be
applied to any subject. We still haven't considered the particular
subject of ICT.
Teachers find it hard to assess ICT for a
variety of reasons. First, it is still a relatively young subject in
curriculum terms, and so we don't have the same body of shared
knowledge and accepted pedagogy and standards that, to an outsider at
least, appear to be enjoyed by English, Maths and Science.
Secondly,
and related to the first point, ICT is often taught by non-experts:
there are very few teachers who have been specifically trained to teach
ICT as their main subject.
Thirdly, may people judge the value
of a piece of work by the end result rather than the process. That's
fine in some subjects, but in ICT it presents a problem insofar as
without seeing the pupil actually do the work, you don't know how
skilled (in a technical sense) they needed to be in order to do it.
Here is an interesting activity you might like to try next time you are
running an ICT INSET session. Ask people whether a pupil who uses a
wizard to create a newsletter is demonstrating a very high or a very
low level of ICT capability. There is no single correct answer to this
question, of course: it all comes down to how you define ICT
capability, which brings us on to…
…Fourthly, teachers often
assess ICT work by the level of technical skill they see (or think they
see) demonstrated. Often, the perceived level of skill required is less
than the actual level of skill required, because the teacher is judging
by her own standards. That complicates matters slightly, but even where
the teacher is accurately judging the skills required, they miss an
important consideration: certain technical skills may be necessary to
achieve a certain level in ICT, but they are not usually sufficient.
The
solution is to go back to basics, ie the National Curriculum, and look
at what ICT is really all about. In fact, it comes down to a very
simple process:
• Finding things out
• Developing ideas and making things happen
• Exchanging and sharing information
• Reviewing and modifying work as it progresses (throughout the other three aspects)
This
being the case, pupils' work should be judged on how well they address
one or more of those aspects of the process. This definitely helps to
put the technical issue in perspective: after all, if a pupil can
program a search in SQL, but still not find much out, they've missed
the point!
See also the article on summative assessment.
A version of this article was originally published in InteracTive in 2003.
What do you
think? Please leave a comment.
© Terry Freedman Thu, 19 Feb 2004
Comments are moderated.
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