Evaluate incorporates a variety of tools, best practices, and resources to support and encourage authentic feedback and objective evaluation practices in the online classroom.
iNacol, the International Association for Online Learning, publishes Standards for Quality Online Teaching. Consider the following standards: Standard D Working as a GAVS educator, I am grateful to have a platform which is designed to set clear expectation for students and teachers. Consistency is key! The course setup tools used by all GAVS teachers allows us to standardize the expectations of the online learner. The platform also provides us with easy ways to prompt responses and provide regular feedback for students. The discussion board sends the teacher a notice that a new post is available. The notice is used to reply to post in a timely matter. Another one of my favorite features is the indicator that a student has read the feedback. Evaluate 1 - Quality Feedback assignment help me to address Standard D by demonstrating how I used feedback to promote student success. Standard G Rubrics are useful tool to help develop student agency. It is critical that students manage their own learning. Students need to know what specific skills are needed to meet and exceed expectations. Rubrics are helpful for me as an educator to be consistent with my grading processes. Evaluate 2 - Competencies addressed Standard G. Creating rubrics in the beginning set a smooth grading procedure for the term. Standard H Evaluate 3 - Personalized Teaching and Learning addressed Standard H. The assignment was a video reflection on assesses learning progress by measuring student achievement of the learning goals. I am a fan of standard based grading. While creating short assessments to provide instant standard based feedback can be a huge task, it is rewarding to see students manage their growth. I find that students learn more when they feel like they are in control of the learning progress. Standard I Evaluate 2 - Data Driven Instruction & Analysis was centered around understanding data to modify content and to guide student learning. The assignment addressed Standard I. By analysis several different types of data, I feel more comfortable discussing how to use the data to improve student success. Based on my experiences working on the Evaluate module, I plan to research how to use competency to support math standards. Overall, Evaluate 3 - Self Reflection was the most beneficial to me. The process gave me time to think and reflect to improve student success. My philosophy on online education includes promoting self regulated learners and making learning culturally relevant to all students. My beliefs leans more towards the progressive approach than any other theory. As a teacher, I also play a huge role in the living community. It is my job to inform people around our community about what is going on inside our school as well as outside. The more educated a community is, the more likely they will become active in certain activities. In many cases, the community and school can both benefit from getting involved. I believe that the students gain more hands on experience and real world application opportunities though these relationships. I believe that all students in my classroom must be challenged to meet high academic standards, but supported, encouraged, and guided in their efforts to do so. I think that student’s motivation to learn comes from within them. It is my job to promote or enhance their motivation by use of technology, real world problems, and culturally relevant experiences in the classroom.
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Evidence of Reflection on My Individual Teaching Abilities
Competencies reminds me of standard based grading where you have assignments that address the standard and possibly other standards addressed in the same assignment. It was challenging to grade because you were not grading assignments but standards. Read this related article for more:http://www.competencyworks.org/reflections/competency-based-grading-and-common-core-math-a-perfect-match/
As an GAVS educator, I have noticed the Competencies tab under assessment. I always wondered how to use the feature. For a math course, the mathematical practice standards could be considered as competencies. Students could complete projects and other assessments that are directly link to the standard to show mastery. GAVS courses are standard based; designed to assessment the standards addressed in the course. Standard based courses are intended for teachers to created the assessments first and plan the lesson around what concepts you expect the student to show mastery on. TOOL states, "Assessments need to measure what it is the students have learned. If students complete the assessment before learning the material and they still score high, this either means they have already learned the material or they are being assessed on general intelligence than specific content." As a SME designing the Advanced Mathematics Decision Making course, I created assessment using the guidelines presented in the state workshops for the course. The course is a collaborative project based course. The students are expected to gain communication skills and how to work well with other. Creating an assessment to show evidence of those skills can be a challenge in a face to face class and almost impossible in the online environment. Group assessments are ideal. However, online students have less time around their class peers to foster teamwork.
GAVS has a process for educators to review the assessments created and provide feedback for improvement. The reviewers check for errors and poorly defined questions. The following assessment is group project intended to assess collaboration, presentation skills and perseverance. The rubric was used to ensure students were informed on the expectation for each criteria and to ensure mastery. The rubric also ensure the assessment was reliable by grading the students using the same set of guidelines. The nice thing about a collaborative project is that it is harder for students to mask their lack of knowledge. Projects requires students to discuss, reflection and produce quality work or answer to their classmates. It is important for teachers to provide feedback that considers specific performance data to promote student growth. Feedback should encourage students to strive for better performance or deeper thought and application. Some feedback is given to share what was observed and some feedback is used as critical feedback to provide critique for improvement. One way to formatively assess student readiness for course content is to give students diagnostic assessments. Using Socrative allows students and teachers to get instant feedback. The tool provide data that can be analyzed to determine areas of strength and weakness. The item analysis can provide the teacher with feedback about the question item. If several students miss the same question, it can be a indication that the question is not addressing the standard being taught or that it is a poorly written question. In the last example, the questions are targeting two different skills. Notice how each question is labeled with a standard. The feedback allowed me to determine how to group students as we began our test preparation lessons. N.Q.3. addresses how well students choose a level of accuracy appropriate to limitations on measurement when reporting quantities. While A.SSE.1 address how well students Interpret expressions that represent a quantity in terms of its context. Each standard has multiple questions to address if the students have mastered the standard. Overall, the assessment addresses following competencies which are a part of the Mathematical Practices: (1)Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. (5) Use appropriate tools strategically. As students complete the assessment over time, they should become better at making sense of problems and using the appropriate tools to solve them. The goal would be to use the tools to build confidence and skill mastery for the End of Course Assessment. Here is a link for educators to copy the assessment: https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#import-quiz/1619109 |
AuthorEbony Anderson-Johnson is a math educator that analyze data and infuses technology in ways to drive instruction. Archives
April 2018
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