Evaluation, the keyword

Dec 4, 2017
3 min read

Since time is running out and it is almost Christmas, this Monday was one of our last classes of innovation and so that we were talking about

This time we started the class playing Kahoot. The theme of the quiz was into evaluation and our experience as students. They asked questions with opened answers about exams, the assessment, and our feelings. Most of the people said that they feel unconfident and nervous when taking an exam and that they study in a different way for a test exam than a traditional one. Also, the majority of us stated that we generally did writing exams and most of the time those were corrected with a red pen (associated with mistakes).

It’s time to change all these topics! We want students to know what they need to improve, not to focus on the fact that they made a mistake. So… Are there different ways of evaluating? And what is more important… Is it possible to have fun while evaluating? After being debating, we reached a conclusion: YES! There are a lot of ways of evaluating (with tests and without tests) and assessing and it can even be fun!

As I said, it is possible to evaluate without tests. There are different options such as:

Portfolios: a collection of students’ work (presentations, homework, collages…) in which learners are considered as an active collaborator in documenting and assessing their own progress. Portfolios promote collaboration, critical thinking, responsibility for their own learning, interaction, etc, but they should be continuously reviewed and updated in order to avoid they become mere storages.
Conferences: conversations or discussions between the teacher and the students focused on process. They promote students’ self-reflection, allow them to gain ownership of their learning, recognize their own accomplishments and enhance oral communication with teachers.
Journals: written conversations between students and teachers. They provide opportunities for students to give feedback about their learning experiences. In addition, journals let students openly express their feelings. They can also be used to gain insights into students' writing skills in the second language. However. students should not feel that their language must be correct or perfect.
Interviews and questionnaires: a set of questions or statements in a structured and formal way that students are expected to respond. They collect information about what affect the students (their language needs and goals) and they can also be used after the teacher’s explanations in order to see the general impression and effectiveness of the course or unit. In this way, they provide permanent feedback from all the students and are easily quantifiable with multiple-choice questions.

It is important to note that though we can evaluate with alternative techniques, there are some competencies that must be evaluated. The Spanish Law of Education (LOE) identifies:

Linguistic communication.
Maths, science and technological competences.
Digital competence.
Learn to learn.
Social and civic competences.
Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship.
Cultural awareness.

In addition, as in every class, our teachers showed us some innovative tools for evaluating such as:

Quizlet: It is an application to practice and master what students are learning. In addition, you can create your own flashcards and study sets.
Class Dojo: It is a tool to keep track of how students are behaving in the classroom: they might get points depending on their behavior. This also allows teachers to keep track of participation, a very important part of the overall grade.
FlipQuiz: A tool with a quick way to create gameshow-style boards for test reviews in the classroom.
Edmodo: Using this tool, students get connected so they can safely collaborate stay organized, and access assignments, grades, and school messages

Finally, after learning some new contents, it was time to design a template for evaluating the competencies. So that, my group and I created a useful evaluation rubric to evaluate our Wix page (You may find it in my Task 6).