Reflective Assessment in Computing Instruction Doug Peterson (doug.peterson@gecdsb.on.ca) Greater Essex County District School Board, Windsor, Ontario J. Philip East (east@cs.uni.edu) University of Northern Iowa Greet audience and introduce us Discussion time should be available but feel free to comment and question as we go Questions/comments before we start?

Overview Background An example (Philip) Another example (Doug) Reflective practice Assessment An example (Philip) Another example (Doug) Recording assessment results & reflecting Discussion (reflection on session) I will provide some background information (briefly I hope :-) Then I will provide an example of reflective assessment from my experience Next, Doug, will provide an additional example from his experience Then, he will address recording assessments of student learning and a tool that facilitates that activity Finally, we will have the official time for questions and discussion Again, even though there is a question/comment time, feel free to ask questions or make comments during the presentation

Reflective Practice (a model) Pollard, Andrew. "The Process of Reflective Teaching." rtWeb. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.rtweb.info/diagrams/fig1-5.html. Teaching is cyclic -- we think, plan, prepare materials, “teach” (act), and then maybe collect, analyze, and evaluate data in deciding what to do next (or next time) Reflective teaching involves thinking about what to do next (time) to improve our teaching or student learning Planning and reflection are similar but not the same -- we all plan what we will teach but we do not all (or always) reflect on our teaching and students’ learning. Reflection is an explicit consideration of how we plan and teach in an effort to do it better -- like thinking about thinking.

Reflective Practice (informally) Considering/Questioning/Wondering What you do How to do better About your teaching About student learning Reading/talking about teaching By yourself or (preferably) with others One thing at a time An informal notion of reflective practice is probably sufficient for most of us Informally, reflection merely means you think about what you do and how you might change something to do it better Can question, think, read, talk, etc. to do reflection Much reflection can be on your own, but the perspectives that others bring to the situation can be very helpful. They will think of things you do not I encourage the use of a narrow focus. Full consideration of most any instructional practice/artifact will touch much of what a teacher does Today, we are considering reflection in assessment, so a few ideas about assessment are pertinent

Assessment Ideas Assessment is a big idea Can assess students, teacher activity (“teaching”), assignment, instructional “approach”, instructional “philosophy” (of a school), teachers … Can be formative (to see whether/how to change practice) or to assess student mis-understanding (and, presumably, to correct it) or can be summative (to tell if or perhaps how well goals were met, e.g., “grade” students, judge an assignment or lesson, see whether the teacher/school/district is “effective” Can be formal (highly planned) or informal (ad hoc, seat of pants) Can occur after or (sometimes) during the teaching Though not included on this slide, it is important to consider what is being assessed, e.g., spreadsheet (features, use, design, PBL, …) Perhaps assessment should guide instruction, e.g., decide on goals, plan assessment, develop instruction/assignment/…, “do” it collecting data, analyze data, assess success (& how to do better next time)

Example 1 (Philip) Computer Skills & Concepts (fluency course) “Design” projects (web, spreadsheet, issue paper) Web project goals Experience design, implement, test & debug Gain insight into why Web errors occur My reflection … Documents Assignment http://www.cns.uni.edu/~east/scholarship/cs_it/2005/rubric1.html Rubric http://www.cns.uni.edu/~east/scholarship/cs_it/2005/project1.html Presentation notes http://www.cns.uni.edu/~east/scholarship/cs_it/2005/P_notes.pdf this example started with “grading” of a project in one of my courses describe the assignment context reflection started with realization that students were not really doing much beyond HTML, I wanted interesting, “designed” projects requiring HTML design/”programming”, not just simple putting things together so, I needed to include that in my assignment and grade students on it [briefly show/discuss assignment, as it exists now] for consistency and to provide a feedback device, I created a grading rubric [briefly show/discuss rubric, as it exists now]

Experience Iterations Assessment reflection changed instruction Included assessment ideas in description Worked to improve assessment ideas Added “design” requirement Urged design and discussed plans (next) Design discussion & instruction Assessment reflection changed instruction Reflection & philosophy (think broadly) My reflection did not end with the changes just mentioned--it continues [indicate actions taken] Important idea is that reflection on a simple student assessment can have a much broader impact In my case, reflecting on assessing this one project has led to a changes in assessment and instruction including consideration of my philosophy of teaching Reflection is important to improving one’s teaching and to knowing/understanding teaching practice Next, Doug will provide some different insights concerning reflective assessment

Example 2 (Doug) A general summative assessment rubric See http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/d&g/cswebquest/ Use of the rubric Influence of the rubric Discussion

Recording / Reflecting? The goal at the end is to assign a value to the assessment What is a “value”? Is it cast in stone? What is the purpose of accumulating the values? Markbook example

For more reading… http://www.rtweb.info/ http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/whatteach/reflect.htm http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=563811 http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/resources/reflection/you.html http://educ.queensu.ca/~ar/schon87.htm http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm

Questions? Comments? Discussion?