Assessment – or the practice of revealing what students know and understand – is routine across all levels of education. With the pandemic forcing assessment to be online, now is an opportunity to reflect on the what, the how, and the why of assessment. This topic has its own field of study, so this post is purely meant to make the reader go, hmmm.
Things that make you go hmmm #1 – A recent twitter feed by Shea Martin began collecting anonymous quotes from teachers and how they are coping with the pandemic. (It is a powerful project you can check out here: https://padlet.com/sheathescholar/ananonymousteacher) Here is one:
I just administered my first high stakes test. I watched one student struggle to focus while he babysat his 3 siblings in a studio apt. What are we assessing when some of his peers are in the classroom and others sit in their quiet Pottery Barn bedrooms?
Things that make you go hmmm #2 – With the rise of online assessment, more virtual proctoring systems are being used. A few of the problems with this include: students having to pay for proctored tests; students being flagged as having cheated for reading the questions out loud, moving too much, or eye twitches; and facial recognition software requiring Black students to shine more light on their faces. For more see: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/07/1006132/software-algorithms-proctoring-online-tests-ai-ethics/ and https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/29/21232777/examity-remote-test-proctoring-online-class-education
Some questions to ponder:
Is it even remotely possible (pun intended) to have equitable assessment practices virtually?
If an assessment needs to be proctored, is it measuring anything worth measuring?
What theories of learning are remote assessment prioritizing and whom do they serve?
Educators should always be starting with a clear understanding of what they are measuring, why are they measuring it, and does their measure actually do what it is intended to do.