Final Reflection on Digital Assessments
Opening
When one thinks of assessments, one usually thinks of tests, but the reality is that assessments are much more than just tests. Most people have experienced many tests throughout their lives, mainly in school settings, but also in jobs and life situations as well. Assessments are involved in many aspects of life because they give insight into a person's various levels about a certain topic or area. This becomes especially true within educational environments. They are necessary to monitor students' progress throughout their educational journey. The question then begins to be how, what, and when should we assess to be most beneficial to all students' educational journeys. It is vital to carefully create, administer, and analyze a variety of forms of assessments to best reflect student learning. In this day and age, assessments are changing and evolving. To begin with, the days of paper-pencil tests are gone for the most part. Assessment is no longer solely multiple choice because there is now the realization that it is not the best and only way to measure a student's learning. Assessments have now moved to online formats which allow for a variety of methods, types, and modalities to be used to measure students' learning. Technology today offers many new opportunities for innovation in educational assessment through rich new assessment tasks and potentially powerful scoring, reporting, and real-time feedback mechanisms (Scalise, K. & Gifford, B. 2006). Digital assessments are here to stay and will only continue to grow and evolve. They provide different opportunities to be presented in an array of online platforms and methods that fit the differentiated needs of 21st-century students. Computer assessment facilitates a detailed analysis of test results that can be used to identify areas where the students have difficulty. This allows educators to utilize data to drive instruction and adapt their teaching to meet students' individual needs.
-The Era of Digital Skills and Digital Assessments
We are living in a digital era where technology has overrun many aspects of our world. This could not be truer within the world of education. It has deeply impacted how instruction is created, administered, and assessed. With this in mind, my perspective as an educator is that digital assessments have impacted teaching in a multitude of ways. A number of influences have brought assessment and feedback to the forefront of institutional and educational agendas, resulting in an increasing imperative to enhance assessment and feedback practices through technology (Davies, 2010). Educators must now focus on building students' digital skills because they will need such skills not only for digital assessments but throughout their educational journey and future careers. Not only have these new formats of assessments shaped how and what we teach, but also how we create assessments and analyze them and their data. It has influenced decision-making processes when we evaluate results and how we can use them to create successful learning experiences for our students. It is crucial for teachers to be aware of the immense need of teaching digital literacy skills to our students. Assessments are now fully digital and online. We know that for a student to be as successful as possible in completing these exams, they must have a solid foundation of technological skills. So focusing on strengthening these skills is a must for all teachers and students. Technology has made the shift in how, and what we prepare for these assessments, as well as how we analyze and use their results. It is really a waste of valuable data when teachers do not use their results wisely because it is giving you a map of what your students need. Here is where you can note their areas of strengths and weaknesses, then as a teacher plan how to address them as effectively and efficiently as possible. With the coming of this era, the immense need to teach our students digital literacy and 21st-century skills will only continue to grow. Digital assessments are definitely here to stay, so we need to think of them as a positive move forward in education and turn it into a productive experience. It is time to embrace change and meet up to the challenge of the digital era in order to build successful students who are equipt with the skills necessary to thrive in a technology-filled world. Changes in the skills base and knowledge our students need to require new learning goals; these new learning goals change the relationship between assessment and instruction. Teachers need to take an active role in making decisions about the purpose of assessment and the content that is being assessed (Edutopia, 2008).
Data-Driven Instruction
Advances in computer technology continue to change the lives of instructors and students (Simin & Heidari, 2013). Assessing students is a crucial part of their education because assessments measure their learning progress. The outcomes will provide data that will be a picture of their strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing data about student performance, educators can tailor their teaching to meet the specific needs of students and provide a common language for school leaders and educators to communicate learning goals in an objective way (Bolz, 2023). Data analysis is essential because it is crucial to carefully analyze all data collected in order to pinpoint students' strengths and weaknesses. Educators must reteach specific skills or concepts in which students were not successful in order to create meaningful learning experiences. Once assessments have been administered and data analysis has been conducted, this data must be put into action. Assessments should gather specific information about learners, and educators can use those assessment results to inform and adjust their instruction. The goal is to use the information gained from assessment data to improve learner outcomes (Bolz, 2023). An effective action plan will assure students are receiving optimal instruction that will target their weaknesses to achieve successful outcomes. As an educator, we are very familiar with assessments and know that assessments measure students' learning. What I did realize throughout this course is that rarely do we ever stop and think about what are best practices when it comes to assessments. I feel that for the most part, people are more worried about the grade and scores of tests than what kinds of assessments are best to measure certain concepts, what we should do with the data collected, or how we can use results to better learn. Ongoing assessments allow teachers to be continuously aware of where students are in the learning process (Powell, 2012). I believe that assessments must be something that is an ongoing process where teachers and students create, administer, and analyze their learning growth. I think tests should not be something given once and done just for the sole purpose of a grade or score. I feel this is what is happening currently in some parts of our k-12 school settings. It is time to shift and reevaluate our focus on assessments.
Traditional Grading System vs Standard-Based Grading System
Computer-based assessment has been used in many disciplines to give both formative feedback and offer summative testing (Simin & Heidari, 2013). Testing and feedback must be considered when selecting an adequate grading system to evaluate what learning we want to assess. I feel that there has to be a deeper understanding of assessments by schools and educators. I believe that oftentimes we just think of them as tests and refer to them as such, instead of heavily focusing on assessing our students as individuals. We should not only be worried about test scores but more so about which methods of assessments are best for our students' learning journeys. Reflect on methods of assessment that bring out their strengths and weaknesses. As well as which grading methods are most conducive to the form of assessment administered and how to best analyze results. If your grading system doesn't guide students toward excellence, it's time for something completely different (Scriffiny,2008). I believe I need to learn more about how assessments are changing and how grading systems are evolving in order to create a more meaningful learning climate for my students. In this digital era, it is definitely time for something completely different. My opinion is that many educators and schools are caught up in traditional grading systems where we want to give numerical grades to anything and everything. I feel we must stop and reflect on which method of assessment and grading best evaluates students' learning such as perhaps that day it is teacher observations, another day a quiz, or a video project, digital presentations, etc. As an educator, I would like to shift away from traditional grading and implement a more standard-based grading system where I feel I can assess my students' learning better. I would focus more so on the content or skills learned and if the child is demonstrating progress as a whole, instead of focusing on solely a numerical grade.
Assessment Affects Motivation
Assessment can also help motivate students, but assessments can sadly unmotivated many students as well. Like most things in life, there are often polar opposites to many people and situations. This is true for students who are on completely opposite spectrums in their learning journeys. There are students who genuinely enjoy the educational process and are ready to take on the challenge of any assessment they confront. These students were known as high achievers, and in turn, this gave them the motivation to continue to strive (Stiggins, 2005). Then on the opposite end of this spectrum are students who have an array of difficulties in their learning journeys. Assessments are usually the last thing these types of students look forward to or focus on. There are also students who do not understand concepts, struggle, and do not perform well on assessments, which causes their self-esteem to plummet and creates a lack of motivation to learn (Stiggins, 2005). Either end of this spectrum deeply impacts the way a student will be motivated or unmotivated throughout different assessment experiences. Creating a positive and meaningful experience is a bar that needs to be set high for all students to achieve success that is tailored to their abilities. My opinion as an educator is that what can be one student's failure can be another student's success and vice versa, what is one student's success can be another student's failure. It is important to consider that all students are unique and different and require different variables in order to positively influence their motivational skills. I believe as educators it should be our goal to guide our students on how to gain intrinsic motivation so that they can formulate their own motivation from within and be proud of their goals and accomplishments. We also have the responsibility to foster a positive, motivating learning environment where students can blossom and flourish. The environment and culture of assessments must not bring about fear and negative feelings where tests hurt students more than they help.
Closing
Assessment affects decisions about grades, placement, advancement, instructional needs, curriculum, and, in some cases, funding. Assessments inspire us to ask these hard questions: "Are we teaching what we think we are teaching?" "Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?" "Is there a way to teach the subject better, thereby promoting better learning?" (Edutopia, 2008). Only when the school systems and educators stop to reflect on these hard questions can meaningful experiences come from assessments. Assessments will forever be a part of the education field because they are a key component of the learning process. As an educator, I believe there is a great need to effectively utilize the data collected from various forms of assessments. I think at times it begins to feel like we need to administer tests and collect grades and data reports, then at times perhaps the data is not utilized appropriately to make meaningful educational decisions. When we can extract meaning from data, it empowers us to make better decisions. We’re living in a time when we have more data than ever at our fingertips. The data must be used to drive instruction tailored to the individual learning needs of each student. Digital assessments will continue to influence and shape education as traditional methods are evolving into new methods. With dynamic visuals, sound, and user interactivity as well as adaptivity to individual test-takers and near real-time score reporting, computer-based assessment vastly expands testing possibilities beyond the limitations of traditional paper-and-pencil tests (Scalise & Gifford, 2006). Through the use of the Internet, the world is at our feet and students can now be assessed using various platforms, systems, and digital tools. I think educators must be mindful that assessments are not only tests but a variety of methods that must be used to assess students' learning progress. There are certain things that tests can not measure, so we must analyze our students as a whole person as that affects their overall learning journey either negatively or positively.
References
Bolz, D. M. J. (2023, June 23). What Is Data-Driven Instruction in Education? Www.hmhco.com. https://www.hmhco.com/blog/what-is-data-driven-instruction
Davies, S.M. (2010). Effective Assessment in a Digital Age.
Edutopia. (2008, July 15). Why Is Assessment Important? Edutopia; George Lucas Educational Foundation. https://www.edutopia.org/assessment-guide-importance
Powell, S.D. (2012). Your introduction to education: explorations in teaching. Pearson.
Scalise, K. & Gifford, B. (2006). Computer-Based Assessment in E-Learning: A Framework for Constructing "Intermediate Constraint" Questions and Tasks for Technology Platforms. Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment. 4.
Scriffiny, P. L. (2008). Seven Reasons for Standards-Based Grading. Educational Leadership, 66(2), 70-74.
Simin, S., & Heidari, A. (2013). Computer-Based Assessment: Pros and Cons. Elixir International Journal, 55, 12732-12734.
Stiggins, R. (2005). From Formative Assessment to Assessment for Learning: A Path to Success in Standards-Based Schools [Review of From Formative Assessment to Assessment for Learning: A Path to Success in Standards-Based Schools]. The Phi Delta Kappan, 87(4), 324–328.
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