Managing assessment remotely with language learners who are challenged by the technology is hard. Not only language but digital skills are being developed in less than ideal circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic. There has been insufficient preparation for the students to easily engage with the media through which the assessments are being delivered. Progress is being made. I think it is observing my students develop the skills to access and return the materials, rather than the tasks themselves, which is most fascinating - and valuable.
There are now ‘smart’ automated means to assess, analytics that can applied, a range of whizz bang apps and platforms potentially at a teacher’s disposal. And if only I had a software engineer as a volunteer to help me out ...my worries would be sorted.
Though seriously, in this situation where crisis management is the order of the day, one has to ask how realistic it is to incorporate more interactive and automated tools from a distance with my low level learners?
Like Kalantzis and Cope I dream of a day when the ability to track learner progress formatively through Artificial Intelligence and intensive data collection at each point of a learning cycle becomes common. This will be a time when summative assessment approaches will be left for dead, or at least be subsumed into an over-arching, formative assessment process.
Put simply, those dreadful, one-off, classroom staged, paper based tests that we pretend are somehow indicative of broad skill development over time really need to go. As ‘assessments’ they actually provide us with very little information about what students know or are capable of doing.
Our goal should be to make assessment integral to all learning insofar as continuous feedback would be provided and progress tracked. Assessment would then become so pervasive that it all-but disappears. Literacies are an ideal site for the development of such a seamlessly integrated learning and assessment environment. What if we move all assessment data collection into the space of learning? Then all we would ever measure is the substance of learning. There could be no need for after-the-event inferences, because what we are doing is measuring learning itself, at its source. And the more data we collect, and the more we view this data through the greatest variety of lenses, the more valid and reliable our assessments will become.
From Cope, B., Kalantzis, “Technology-Mediated Writing Assessments: Paradigms and Principles.” Computers and Composition 28:79-96.
But reality intervenes. I feel I am in an odd situation with my learners who have been thrown into the online “deep end”.
For me, the approach has been to design and collect a number of varying, formative tasks which have been prepared for through research and work with others. The assessments have been returned to me across the term, I correct them, collate them and convert them into complete PDFs for each individual. I am limited by having to make reference to a range of Elements, Required Knowledge and Skills outlined in standardised tests. So there are obvious constraints and parameters to work within. I am stuck with one foot in the world of a tired traditional approach, the other online (with my head in the clouds?)
On the practical delivery level, all assessment tasks are finally transferred to a shared folder that my coordinator can access, download and process at her end.
I have to admit, my dreamy head is spinning.
It has taken me a lot of time gathering all the parts, collating and converting. (In the future all of this could be done by a bot or some form of AI - oh yes, please 😂) but I’m stuck having to cope with this alone for the time being.
There are a range of technical challenges and I’ve brought in some ‘industrial strength’ conversion and compression software to deal with huge file types emailed or messaged to me by the students and/or their “home-schooler/helpers”. These helpers are usually their (grand)kids and this impressive collaborative work, (considering my students knew little or nothing about ways of conveying files electronically), is precisely the type of relevant, hands on learning we should be promoting.
There are also official cover sheets requiring signatures and various sections that need to be completed by the teacher that need to be integrated for compliance purposes. Pages are missing, further communication has had to occur - and that takes a lot more time to rectify than it normally would.
It should be remembered that my adult language learners do not (as yet) have the skills to work in the same way as young, tech savvy college students.
They started studying online with a single week’s notice and very limited training. At best what can be hoped for is the gradual initiation into ‘smarter’ ways of working.
What’s required is a revolution in our approach to both classroom based teaching and assessment that I believe will eventually filter down into the adult literacy, language, numeracy and basic education field.
Again, I am in agreement with Cope and Kalantzis,
...curricula and assessments in their traditional formats and media are in need of updating in order to make optimal use of the affordances of these digital spaces, and to create learning and assessment environments which are manifestly contemporary in the communicative options they allow.”
(Op.cit)
