Teaching Modalities
At the beginning of the semester, we began thinking about standards that help guide the use of technology to create meaningful learning environments. Then we explored a bit about UDL and spent some time with the four elements teachers can consider for differentiation. Last week we looked at technology integration models, specifically looking at the USF Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) and considering how that resource might guide your decisions about why, when and how to use technology to nuance your teaching and provide a variety of ways for your students to build understanding and share what they learn.
This week we will discuss a variety of teaching and learning modalities and how those modalities might impact teaching and learning, classroom management, and assessment.
What Can You Dream?
As you enter your classroom, you will be considering many questions. You will likely be pondering how to know what to assess. You could be playing with ideas about what technologies can help make formative and summative assessments effective and efficient. It will also be helpful to keep in mind how teacher performance is assessed, and how that informs the assessment of school performance.
This week, we will encourage you to think about what school looks like now and imagine what you think it could look like. What do you think is important for students to learn? Can they learn that anywhere, anytime? Can teachers help every student succeed when they are not physically together? How can you create a safe, welcoming learning environment across time and space?
Watch the video “Above and Beyond”. Does it bring you some new ideas?
Above and Beyond is a short digital story created through collaboration by members of Partnership for 21st Century Skills and FableVision. The story reflects the 21st Century Skills by showing what is possible when communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity (often referred to as the 4Cs, but you will also recognize alignment with the definition of meaningful learning) take center stage in schools and transform learning opportunities for all kids.
Teaching and Learning Modalities
A modality is a particular mode in which something exists or is experienced. When we refer to learning modalities, we are discussing the modes in which teachers and students experience teaching and learning. Prior to 2020, the primary modality for PreK-12 teaching and learning was face-to-face (F2F), everyone in the same space at the same time. Over the past few years, almost everyone has experienced teaching and learning online in some way. This has given educators the opportunity to re-think the learning environments they create, and exposed inequalities in resources across school districts.
As you enter the classroom, you will find opportunities to teach PreK-12 in F2F, online synchronous, online asynchronous, and sometimes hybrid modalities. What do you think some of the strengths of each modality might be? What challenges might you and your students encounter?
There has been a lot of research into teaching and learning, assessing student learning, and classroom management in various modalities. As you are exploring, think about what you have learned together in this course and consider your personal experiences as a student. Use that understanding to help dream your future classroom.
Dave Cormier and Ashlyne O’Neil have written a book, 12 Key Ideas: An Introduction to Teaching Online. I don’t know Ashlyne, but I do know Dave, and he is feisty and does not things should be as they have always been. Click into their book and skim a couple of chapters that grab your interest. As you are skimming, think about what you would do well teaching in different modalities, whether you would prefer synchronous or asynchronous environments, and what technologies you might need to learn.
Did you feel yourself drawn to the chapters about building community and working together? Maybe teaching with care? Those include some helpful hints for classroom management. You might have been intrigued by the chapters about designing activities and how to keep the environment engaging. That will definitely help you come to ideas about how to assess what your students are learning. Hopefully you took some time for Keep it Simple, and, ironically, I also think the chapter on information abundance is interesting.
Formative and Summative Assessments Using Technology
Regardless of the teaching modality, you will find it important to assessment what the students are learning along the way and what they have learned as your topic concludes. Formative and summative assessments are both used to determine how well students are performing.
Formative assessment is ongoing and provides information needed to adjust teaching and learning (remember differentiation?). It gives important feedback to students letting them know they are on the right track and helps the teacher determine whether students are ready to move on to the next task. Summative assessment is more of a singular event at the end an instructional unit or module. To get the full picture of how well students are performing and whether or how instruction needs to be adjusted, a teacher needs both formative and summative assessments.
Assessment also helps students gauge their own learning. Nu-Man and Porter (2018) claim that “granting students access to their performance in class and demonstrating whether they understand the material covered enhances their learning experience and development (n.p.).” To get the full picture of how well students are performing and whether or how instruction needs to be adjusted, a teacher needs both formative and summative assessments.
Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to help create meaningful and measurable learning goals.
Effective Assessment of Student Learning
Effective assessment is crucial in order to discern, evaluate, and communicate where students are on their learning journeys. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education (2008, p. 1) shares seven items than can help ensure effective assessment:
- Have clearly stated learning outcomes and share them with your students, so they know what you expect from them. Help them understand what your most important goals are (detailed in a rubric you will use to assess their research project).
- Match your assessment to what you teach and vice versa. If you expect your students to demonstrate good writing skills, explain how you define good writing, and help students develop their skills.
- Use many different measures and many different kinds of measures. We know that students learn and demonstrate their learning in many different ways. Some learn best by reading and writing, others through collaboration with peers, others through listening, creating a schema or design, or hands-on practice, so give your students a variety of ways to demonstrate what they’ve learned.
- Help students learn how to do the assessment task. No matter what kind of assessment you are planning, at least some of your students will need your help in learning the skills needed to succeed on that assessment.
- Engage and encourage your students. Engaging students in building the assessment can be encouraging to them. For example, when you introduce them to the rubric, ask them if they think it’s missing anything or if they would like to have something else to be measured.
- Interpret assessment results appropriately. Suskie (2000) notes that it is “often most appropriate to base a judgement on a standard: Did the student present compelling evidence? summarize accurately? make justifiable inferences? At other times, it may be appropriate to consider growth as well. Does the student who once hated medieval art now love it, even though she can’t always remember names and dates? Does another student, once incapable of writing a coherent argument, now do so passably, even if his performance is not yet up to your usual standards?” (p. 3).
- Evaluate the outcomes of your assessments. Suskie (2000) adds “if your students don’t do well on a particular assessment, ask them why. Sometimes your question or prompt isn’t clear; sometimes you may find that you simply didn’t teach a concept well. Revise your assessment tools, your pedagogy, or both, and your assessments are bound to be fairer the next time that you use them” (p. 3).
Digital Portfolios
Digital portfolios can be an effective way for students and teachers to document their learning experiences. Experts distinguish 3 different types of digital or electronic portfolios that are currently in use:
- Online assessment systems where students place artifacts in an institutionally designed template
- A “print-loaded” portfolio that takes a paper text and displays electronically
- A portfolio that uses text boxes, hyperlinking, visuals, audio texts and design elements to convey a teacher’s materials.
Types of Portfolio Assessments
When using portfolios, students choose which artifacts best represent their ability to meet the standards, thus the portfolio process can be a democratic one. Choosing an artifact as evidence that you have met a specific standard is probably the hardest part of putting together your portfolio. Which type of portfolio will you create as part of the OKState Ideal Graduate initiative?
Assessment of Teacher and School Performance
The Teacher and Leader Effectiveness oversees Oklahoma’s teacher/leader evaluation system that is used to inform instruction, create professional development opportunities and improve both the practice and art of teaching and leading. The Office of Accountability shares school profiles. It’s helpful to know some of the expectations those groups are measuring. You might consider designing your classroom instruction and assessment using similar language.
