Educational Implications
Choice as a consideration in designing assessments
This research project was an experiment in what happens when students have choice built into their assessments. Having choice in assessment provided a myriad of benefits based on my observations. Students were typically more interested, engaged, and motivated. In Role Reversal Mark Barnes wrote about this phenomenon. He explained that choice gives students the opportunity to work on things that interest them specifically. That interest leads to motivation and investment in the work they are doing. In my classroom choice gave my students the opportunity to express their creativity or become an expert scientist. The quality of their work improved dramatically and, because each student was working on a unique topic, they created original work rather than copying their peers. My students enjoyed these assessments and as a teacher I was so impressed by what I saw. There was so much more learning taking place. I want to reiterate the words of Paul (2013) which explains this phenomenon:
“When we’re interested in what we’re learning, we pay closer attention; we process the information more efficiently; we employ more effective learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features. When we’re interested in a task, we work harder and persist longer, bringing more of our self-regulatory skills into play.” Having choice allowed my students to engage with content that was interesting to them. Because of this they were not only more engaged but they learned more because they were interested in what they were learning.
As I move into my first year of teaching I will continue to incorporate choice into my assessments. I want to foster my students’ identities as sharers of knowledge rather than having them complete assessments for the sake of getting credit.
As a side note, choice in assessments can look a number of different ways including choice in topic, media, or information included. For my students, being able to choose the information they wanted to include in their assessment appeared to be more beneficial. While being able to choose their topic was fun and interesting, they felt that they learned more and really became experts through the process of researching and choosing information on a more bounded topic. It is important for each teacher to discover what types of choices benefit their students the best and build those opportunities into assessments.
Previously it has been difficult for teachers to give students choice because the state standards and their accompanying tests focused on a huge breadth of surface level facts for students to remember. The accountability requirements of NCLB gave teachers little room to incorporate the types of projects that allow student choice because there was simply not enough time to cover all of the standards, prepare students for standardized tests, and incorporate time consuming projects into the curriculum.
As we move into the era of Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) I believe teachers have more room for choice in their assessments. Rather than a list of facts students need to know to meet standards, the focus is shifting to depth of knowledge and application of skills. With the new focus on research and developing arguments in the Common Core and science and engineering practices in the NGSS, there is a real opportunity for students to choose how they will show mastery of these standards. These standards are designed such that particular skills be transferred and applied to different situations and it is a new and exciting opportunity for teachers to bring in the element of choice to empower students and engage them as an active participant in their education rather than a passive information collector. I implore teachers and those who design the assessments for Common Core to take this opportunity to incorporate choice into these assessments. I hope we can all see how giving power to students improves outcomes for everyone involved, just as I saw throughout this research.
When students “own it” everyone benefits
When I gave my students choice in their assessment, they became invested in the work they were doing. In phase 1, it was an opportunity for my students to express their creativity while sharing their knowledge. In phase 2 my students had the chance to become an expert and teach others. In both cases my students really owned their work. They wanted to create a quality project because they felt this ownership. Once they were completed, my students had pride in what they had done. I had pride in what they had done. Their work had meaning.
In both phases there were particular instances of students owning their projects that stood out to me. In phase 1 I had a very bright student who was absolutely silent the entire year. He always completed his work and performed well in the class but never engaged in conversations. During the Thermochemistry Project that all changed. After the very first day he came up to me during and after class to propose an experiment addressing the question, "Why do pools feel warmer at night?" Throughout the project he emailed and talked with me seeking guidance and updating me with details of his experiment. At the end of the project he had a detailed poster that had all the elements of a full lab write up, from methodology to graphs of data to conclusions. It was inspiring to see. In phase 2 there was a particular group that created the most detailed poster in the entire class. The students in this group generally worked hard but often struggled with the content. In the Organic Molecule Project, however, they put in more effort than I had ever seen. Each team member did extensive research on the topic and they brought it all together to create an extremely informative and compelling argument for the importance of researching ethanol. At the end of the project all three students couldn't stop talking about how proud they were of their project. It's moments like these that make teaching such a fulfilling enterprise.
So often as teachers we are concerned about numbers and test scores as government and society demands a quantitative measure of accountability. This attitude trickles down to our students and we begin to see shortcuts in student work: copying, plagiarism, hastily finished work. The bare minimum to complete the assignments. This is not the best our students can do. As educators it is our job to promote the best in our students and many of our current assessments aren’t working to do this. Designing assessments that the students can own and building in choice and opportunities for our students to share what they can do with a larger audience is one way we can help our students realize the potential of what they can do. Ron Berger writes, “Once a student sees that he or she is capable of quality, of excellence, that student is never quite the same. There is a new self-image, a new notion of possibility. There is an appetite for excellence.” We need to feed this appetite rather than fixating on points and checkmarks for completed work.
This research project was an experiment in what happens when students have choice built into their assessments. Having choice in assessment provided a myriad of benefits based on my observations. Students were typically more interested, engaged, and motivated. In Role Reversal Mark Barnes wrote about this phenomenon. He explained that choice gives students the opportunity to work on things that interest them specifically. That interest leads to motivation and investment in the work they are doing. In my classroom choice gave my students the opportunity to express their creativity or become an expert scientist. The quality of their work improved dramatically and, because each student was working on a unique topic, they created original work rather than copying their peers. My students enjoyed these assessments and as a teacher I was so impressed by what I saw. There was so much more learning taking place. I want to reiterate the words of Paul (2013) which explains this phenomenon:
“When we’re interested in what we’re learning, we pay closer attention; we process the information more efficiently; we employ more effective learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features. When we’re interested in a task, we work harder and persist longer, bringing more of our self-regulatory skills into play.” Having choice allowed my students to engage with content that was interesting to them. Because of this they were not only more engaged but they learned more because they were interested in what they were learning.
As I move into my first year of teaching I will continue to incorporate choice into my assessments. I want to foster my students’ identities as sharers of knowledge rather than having them complete assessments for the sake of getting credit.
As a side note, choice in assessments can look a number of different ways including choice in topic, media, or information included. For my students, being able to choose the information they wanted to include in their assessment appeared to be more beneficial. While being able to choose their topic was fun and interesting, they felt that they learned more and really became experts through the process of researching and choosing information on a more bounded topic. It is important for each teacher to discover what types of choices benefit their students the best and build those opportunities into assessments.
Previously it has been difficult for teachers to give students choice because the state standards and their accompanying tests focused on a huge breadth of surface level facts for students to remember. The accountability requirements of NCLB gave teachers little room to incorporate the types of projects that allow student choice because there was simply not enough time to cover all of the standards, prepare students for standardized tests, and incorporate time consuming projects into the curriculum.
As we move into the era of Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) I believe teachers have more room for choice in their assessments. Rather than a list of facts students need to know to meet standards, the focus is shifting to depth of knowledge and application of skills. With the new focus on research and developing arguments in the Common Core and science and engineering practices in the NGSS, there is a real opportunity for students to choose how they will show mastery of these standards. These standards are designed such that particular skills be transferred and applied to different situations and it is a new and exciting opportunity for teachers to bring in the element of choice to empower students and engage them as an active participant in their education rather than a passive information collector. I implore teachers and those who design the assessments for Common Core to take this opportunity to incorporate choice into these assessments. I hope we can all see how giving power to students improves outcomes for everyone involved, just as I saw throughout this research.
When students “own it” everyone benefits
When I gave my students choice in their assessment, they became invested in the work they were doing. In phase 1, it was an opportunity for my students to express their creativity while sharing their knowledge. In phase 2 my students had the chance to become an expert and teach others. In both cases my students really owned their work. They wanted to create a quality project because they felt this ownership. Once they were completed, my students had pride in what they had done. I had pride in what they had done. Their work had meaning.
In both phases there were particular instances of students owning their projects that stood out to me. In phase 1 I had a very bright student who was absolutely silent the entire year. He always completed his work and performed well in the class but never engaged in conversations. During the Thermochemistry Project that all changed. After the very first day he came up to me during and after class to propose an experiment addressing the question, "Why do pools feel warmer at night?" Throughout the project he emailed and talked with me seeking guidance and updating me with details of his experiment. At the end of the project he had a detailed poster that had all the elements of a full lab write up, from methodology to graphs of data to conclusions. It was inspiring to see. In phase 2 there was a particular group that created the most detailed poster in the entire class. The students in this group generally worked hard but often struggled with the content. In the Organic Molecule Project, however, they put in more effort than I had ever seen. Each team member did extensive research on the topic and they brought it all together to create an extremely informative and compelling argument for the importance of researching ethanol. At the end of the project all three students couldn't stop talking about how proud they were of their project. It's moments like these that make teaching such a fulfilling enterprise.
So often as teachers we are concerned about numbers and test scores as government and society demands a quantitative measure of accountability. This attitude trickles down to our students and we begin to see shortcuts in student work: copying, plagiarism, hastily finished work. The bare minimum to complete the assignments. This is not the best our students can do. As educators it is our job to promote the best in our students and many of our current assessments aren’t working to do this. Designing assessments that the students can own and building in choice and opportunities for our students to share what they can do with a larger audience is one way we can help our students realize the potential of what they can do. Ron Berger writes, “Once a student sees that he or she is capable of quality, of excellence, that student is never quite the same. There is a new self-image, a new notion of possibility. There is an appetite for excellence.” We need to feed this appetite rather than fixating on points and checkmarks for completed work.