Assessment

## How can you implement assessment so that it enhances student-centered learning?

* The best advice to implement assessment might be to pilot your own student-centered learning. Use an improvement tool developed by Deming (1982) known as Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA). PDSA helps determine if a given assessment is effective. with PDSA, the teacher must first PLAN how to develop the assessment activity and reflect upon its benefits to the student. Next is to DO the assessment exactly as planned. Once the assessment has been piloted the next step is to STUDY whether or not it provided the intended benefits to the students. The teacher then ACTS on what was learned in the STUDY step before using again. The 2nd or 3rd steps are to inform your department chair and identify others in your department who are already on board or who might be open to experimenting with similar methods. Meeting with the chair to explain the reason for adopting student-centered assessments may help him/her defend (or so it is hoped) the newfound pedagogy should colleagues and students questions or complain about the change. Identifying peers on campus will also provide a sounding board and a support network to sustain one's efforts to put students increasingly in charge of assessing, and thus guiding, their own learning.   EXIT CARDS can be a student-centered approach to assessment. They can be anything from a 3-2-1 approach to a mini-quiz. An Exit Card is a brief assignment students do at the end of class which they must turn in before leaving the room. It typically lets the teacher know what the students understand and what they are still struggling with. For older students, it can carry more weight if it counts towards their class grade and includes an element of self-assessment (for example, "What did I do well today?" or "What would I like to do differently tomorrow?")
* To keep students mindful of their own progress, have the class do simple self-assessments at the end of each class. The self-assessment should have 5 topics at most and should be simply worded. The questions should be the same each class, so students know what to work on to improve. Students can give themselves a score between 1 and 5. Example questions:  Did I listen to others? Did I raise my hand before speaking? Did I write clearly? Did I do my best work? Did I learn something new?
* Students can also utilize Peer Assessment where students will have the opportunity to provide feedback on their fellow students work as it is in progress. This method works best when the students have sufficient assignment completion time in order to incorporate the suggestions from their peers into the final project.
* Portfolios can also be utilized to assess students in Student-centered learning. There are two main kinds of portfolios for this purpose; ones which showcase a student's best work and the other which demonstrates a students growth and mastery of a particular topic. In either case, the portfolios allow for a student to become involved in putting the works together and lets them reflect back on what they have learned so far in the classroom.
* Student choice is one key aspect of student-centered learning (Bredersen) and it can play a role in assessment. One way of facilitating choice in assessment is, where appropriate, to have students select from a range of assessment activities or products. If you can devise a list in which alternatives appeal to different types of learner, then you are maximizing the strategy. So, for example, after teaching a history unit on the War of 1812, and you want to assess student understanding of why it happened, what it involved and what were its outcomes, you could ask students to either: write and record a song (which might appeal to the musical learner); devise and produce a board game (which might appeal to the kinesthetic learner); or draw a cartoon (which might appeal to the visual learner). It is important that the assessment rubrics are consistent so that, for example, there are, whatever the assessment method chosen, a fixed number of points available under any product type for accurately showing the content The only difference should be the assessment of the product type itself.
* A second way of implementing choice in assessment is, when students have studied a principle or concept you assess their understanding by having them chose an example or case study through which they can demonstrate their learning. A unit on global warming and climate change might then ask students to chose a community that is being affected by rising sea levels, to research it and then show how, using a generic assessment rubric, that community is threatened by the problem and what it is doing to alleviate the threat. Students will usually be more motivated than if you give them a predetermined case study which they all analyze.
* Documented Problem Solutions: Choose one to three problems and ask students to write down all of the steps they would take in solving them with an explanation of each step. Consider using this method as an assessment of problem-solving skills at the beginning of the course or as a regular part of the assigned homework.
* As a teacher you can also implement an assessment so that it enhances student learning by explaining a real-life (may include fictional characters) application of the topic and be sure to use words and references they would understand.
* You may also call a student to the board, who has the correct answer, and have them explain how they got to their answer.

Sources:

Andrade, Heidi, Huff, Kristen, & Brooke, Georgia. (April 2012). Assessing Learning. *The Students at the Center Series.* [PDF Document]. Retrieved from http://www.studentsatthecenter.org/sites/scl.dl-dev.com/files/Assessing%20Learning.pdf

Bredersen, J. D., My Return to Differentiated Instruction, *Educational Leadership*Vol. 66 (2009) retrieved from: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/summer09/vol66/num09/My-Return-to-Differentiated-Instruction.aspx

Deming, W. E. (1982). Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, CAES.

Exit Cards. *Facing History and Ourselves*. Retrieved from https://www.facinghistory.org/for-educators/educator-resources/teaching-strategies/exit-cards

Jobs for the Future. (2015). Student-centered Assessment Guide: Peer Assessment. Student-centered Assessment Resources. Retrieved from http://www.studentsatthecenter.org/resources/student-centered-assessment-resources

Using Specific Types of CATs. *Whys and Hows of Assessment*. Retrieved from http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/assesslearning/CATs.html