Transforming Assessment Praxis

I am on a pilot of a new NZQA Best Practice Workshop model, which is around Transforming Assessment Praxis.

While it hasn't been all inspiring, as most of the work that they have been talking about over the last five weeks has been ideas that I have been working on with my students for the past couple of years. It has made me more aware of what we are trying to do at HPSS. Knowing the learner and working with contexts.

As well as looking at Naturally Occurring evidence

While watching the three hour session tonight that I missed last week, around What currently drives you current assessment practice, What students value, Future shifts, Modes of assessment and naturally occurring evidence. I have been sent two assessments to moderate by another teacher, looking at these tonight and putting the ideals that I have been working through, I have been able to make some changes to evidence statements. While it is an assessment in Digital Information, database creation, the assessment is written in such a way that it allows for a student to develop their own context, yet also offer ideas for those students that can't think of one, or it does show the students what the rigour of the assessment should be. Having the conversation with the teacher on the phone while modifying the assessment through Google Drive has allowed for some great conversations to happen about how the assessment could be delivered, and what contexts should be included to help develop students ideas around rigour.
Evidence statements have now been changed to allow for a screencast of the database working by the student to show how it would function.

But the highlight of the work was on area of the assessment that had been developed which was on to show skilfully or efficiently as required as part of the step up of the assessment. This is the masterpiece of the assessment in my opinion, without even knowing it or putting it in for assessment sake, this allows for naturally occurring evidence of the technology level 2 achievement standard around planning to be included. So a 6 credit assessment, is now a 10 credit assessment.

In the presentation I was watching tonight, was included some information on overlaps. This is something I think originally looked at when the assessments came out, however I think I was turned off at the amount of evidence required by the standards. Having a better understanding of the standards now and evidence required through my role in the subject association helps me to now develop better assessment outcomes. A feature of what we are looking at as part of the Workshop15 in the holidays. To many teachers are talking about the amount of evidence needed for assessments now. Why are we not thinking smarter and allowing the technologies that we use everyday to assist us.

I know look forward to the next two weeks where I get to put my plans for the task into action and develop an assessment resource 

Things to consider …

Prior to writing your assessment resource, you will need to consider the following:

• Your goal
• What the student voice has told me
• Student input into context
• Knowing my student
• Documents which will inform my assessment resource (Achievement Standard, Conditions of assessment, Clarifications documents)
• Modes of assessment
• Variety of ways to collect evidence

My Goal, to look at how naturally occurring evidence and authentic contexts can help develop engaging learning that can be used for overlaps of assessment.

Challenge accepted

When I first came up with this SPIN I thought I would just go through and do the same old tasks in python that I had been doing with my students for the last couple of years. However, this place makes you want to challenge yourself.

That is what I have been doing over the past 10 weeks, challenging myself in what I am doing with my SPINs. In Term 1 I had a SPIN for programming where I used the programming language Scratch. This term I took it up a level to a text based programming language, called python. This is able to be freely downloaded and installed on the computers without having a licence which makes it work in our BYOD environment as well as being able to be installed on the school computers.

The challenge of programming is that sometimes it is just maths problems that get created and solved. I decided that I wanted to look at game development. Not your normal games of multiplayer environments in 3D. The simple games of Quizes, 8 Ball, Hangman, Paper Rock Scissors and High Low.

These are games which can be developed to increase in skill and ability. Perfect for a differentiated class. Why you might ask. The class that I teach is not just one year level. It is 4 year levels in one.
I have year 8, year 9, year 10, and year 11 in the same class. One thing is that we do not have the achievement standard to contend with. This is about the learning. Students come in with all levels of ability already, working the tasks into the different scaffolds helped. It meant that a student could still succeed. Working with groups of students around the class provided opportunities for support, most of the time it was a student asking before they tried the code themselves. They wanted the validation, yet the answer was almost always the same, "Have you tried it?"


A number of these ideas have come from other resources on the Internet, but being able to develop these and work them towards our students knowledge and understanding. Bringing in our schools Learning Design Model helps students understand the common language in our school as well as areas that they may need to look at and develop.

Using self assessment tools like SOLO taxonomy provides students with feedback and those next steps in their learning.

As I near the end of term, I reflect back at where we started with code being copied from the TV and whiteboard, through to now students planning, testing and developing work as an individual or peer programming. Through the use of other items such as playing cards for high low and working out what has to happen, and what steps are required. Through to playing hangman in class and working out the word, a list of letters tried and how many guesses left(which is interesting as some are as little as 8, where some have 16). Getting students to work out the planning through playing the games has helped immensely.

But one thing that still gets the students are the use of the less than and greater than signs (< >) in programs.
if num1 < num2 : # num1 is less than num2
if num1 > num2 : # num1 is greater than num2

Why is it so difficult?

Looking at data

Learning analytics was a focus of the core education 2014 trends. Though this has been a focus for me for quite a while.

This is from the Core Education Trends page 

We need to ask what data we’re gathering about our students and their progress through learning. If we’re completing tasks in a range of different online spaces, how do we bring all of that disparate data about a learner and make it whole again — make a complete picture of this child. 

Another implication for us is the challenge to use that data once it’s gathered. There’s a great saying about data: it needs to be useful and used. It must be relevant, reliable and meaningful, but it’s pointless to gather data if we’re going to use it. What are your teaching as inquiry processes like in your school? How well is data used when making decisions about what needs to be learnt next and how students might best learn it? Are you drawing on the rich data you have about your students? 

Some of the ethical implications for us centre around data sovereignty and privacy, the real power of learning analytics is unlocked when you’re able to work with large data sets — which means sharing data across schools. How are you going to ensure you deal fairly with students and other schools when sharing data? If you’re contributing to national-level data collection, have you thought through the implication around who has access to it, how student rights are managed? 

If we can start to make use of learning analytics to get the right learning activity into those student's hands, and maximise the engagement and motivation they have for that learning activity, we’ve got a really powerful model for personalising learning for every student.

ChallengesWhat data are we gathering in our schools?
How is it being stored and managed?
Who has access to it?
How is it being used to inform what is happening at school level?
How is it contributing to national-level data collection to inform strategic decisions around resourcing etc.?

From http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends/ten-trends-2014/learning-analytics

To many times data is collected and never looked at again. At HPSS we are just about to go through our data collection process, from e-asttle tests to IKAN testing (I had to look that one up). 

One thing I think about is my own subject area, what data is it that I am collecting on the students? And how am I using it to inform my teaching.

Be it a single page to see if students have developed a concept? A webpage showing information and how they have put it together? Or is it a portfolio of work that shows a learning journey?

I have been through some ideas in how the school wants me to report back on a students learning. I have been used to having to do curriculum level, with a Basic, Proficient and Advanced. However the focus at HPSS is just the level, however, we are looking at SOLO taxonomy as part of our report back.

It is however somewhat different to the normal Parent Teacher Evenings that I have been used to. A five minute conversation, normally one way to the parent in how they are going. Normally I hope that the students has come along and they can explain what they are doing in class. It is a good way to see if concepts that you are teaching and making there way through. Sometimes I have had to go back and think about the learning objectives and success criteria that I have on the board. Have I made the learning explicit?

I plan on running a technology literacy test with the students to see what their understanding at Year 9 is around concepts of Nature of Technology. This will be carried out through a google form, just to get some base data. It is unsure if I can get the entire Year 9 to do this, as it would be good to see what is coming in from our contributing schools.