Make Grading Less Painful: Empower Students!
I had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop this week that I hope saves teachers dozens of hours this semester, and it's based on this quote by grading guru Ken O'Connor:
"Don't leave students out of the grading process. Involve students; they can - and should - play key roles in assessment and grading that promote achievement."
The workshop was designed to share a series of practical strategies that could be used to have students assess themselves and one another, taking some of the pressure off the teacher to be the sole provider of feedback in the classroom. For instance, one strategy asks students to assess their confidence while taking an assessment and then their preparation after seeing the scores of an assessment:
Another strategy helped students to set "SMART Goals" for the assistance they will seek between assessments:
Evaluating one's preparation before, during, and after an assessment was also encouraged:
While I believe the different strategies I shared will be valuable to the teachers I shared them with, those in attendance also had some valid questions and concerns about student motivation. Specifically, they questioned the logistics of using self-assessment strategies with students who are less intrinsically driven. I didn't have any solid answers at the time, and this stressed me out. I had used these strategies with success in the classroom and the students participated...but in hindsight, I didn't know why! This got me researching, and I was happy to stumble across a book I had read several years ago called Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning by Jan Chappuis. She cites Sadler's (1989) conclusion that students must develop the "capacity to monitor the quality of their own work during production" by focusing in on three questions: "Where am I going?;" "Where am I now?;" "How can I close the gap?"
The book then goes into specific motivation-driven strategies designed around the idea that students like being "decision-makers" when it comes to their learning. When they have this power, they get things done. One specific question in my workshop came when I had suggested that teachers not use time to grade a summative assessment where the student clearly wasn't ready. Some in attendance were concerned because there always has to be an end to our wait for students to achieve. What if I never get an assessment from this student that is ready to be graded? What if it is final exam time and I know I don't have time to get this student to his or her destination? My hope is that empowering students to make decisions regarding their preparation and readiness will turn them into the sort of students who relish a second chance...or a third, or a fourth, to get an assessment right.
Chappuis writes, "Motivation and achievement both increase when instruction is guided by clearly defined targets." She also suggests that students feel more in control when teachers are clearly focused on one learning goal at a time. She concludes that our overall classroom strategy should be to strengthen student "self-efficacy (belief that effort will lead to improvement)" and doing so will produce the intrinsic motivation we're looking for.
In conclusion, I hypothesize that working these empowering strategies into the classroom will produce students who are not the creators of logistical headaches. I hope the teachers in my workshop give these strategies a shot, and I hope - for their sake - that this hypothesis is correct!
"Don't leave students out of the grading process. Involve students; they can - and should - play key roles in assessment and grading that promote achievement."
The workshop was designed to share a series of practical strategies that could be used to have students assess themselves and one another, taking some of the pressure off the teacher to be the sole provider of feedback in the classroom. For instance, one strategy asks students to assess their confidence while taking an assessment and then their preparation after seeing the scores of an assessment:
Another strategy helped students to set "SMART Goals" for the assistance they will seek between assessments:
Evaluating one's preparation before, during, and after an assessment was also encouraged:
While I believe the different strategies I shared will be valuable to the teachers I shared them with, those in attendance also had some valid questions and concerns about student motivation. Specifically, they questioned the logistics of using self-assessment strategies with students who are less intrinsically driven. I didn't have any solid answers at the time, and this stressed me out. I had used these strategies with success in the classroom and the students participated...but in hindsight, I didn't know why! This got me researching, and I was happy to stumble across a book I had read several years ago called Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning by Jan Chappuis. She cites Sadler's (1989) conclusion that students must develop the "capacity to monitor the quality of their own work during production" by focusing in on three questions: "Where am I going?;" "Where am I now?;" "How can I close the gap?"
The book then goes into specific motivation-driven strategies designed around the idea that students like being "decision-makers" when it comes to their learning. When they have this power, they get things done. One specific question in my workshop came when I had suggested that teachers not use time to grade a summative assessment where the student clearly wasn't ready. Some in attendance were concerned because there always has to be an end to our wait for students to achieve. What if I never get an assessment from this student that is ready to be graded? What if it is final exam time and I know I don't have time to get this student to his or her destination? My hope is that empowering students to make decisions regarding their preparation and readiness will turn them into the sort of students who relish a second chance...or a third, or a fourth, to get an assessment right.
Chappuis writes, "Motivation and achievement both increase when instruction is guided by clearly defined targets." She also suggests that students feel more in control when teachers are clearly focused on one learning goal at a time. She concludes that our overall classroom strategy should be to strengthen student "self-efficacy (belief that effort will lead to improvement)" and doing so will produce the intrinsic motivation we're looking for.
In conclusion, I hypothesize that working these empowering strategies into the classroom will produce students who are not the creators of logistical headaches. I hope the teachers in my workshop give these strategies a shot, and I hope - for their sake - that this hypothesis is correct!
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