featuring Valrie Chambers, Mike Roberto, and Janie Zencak (May 13, 2021)
Assessing students who are doing most, if not all, of their work in a virtual setting has been a significant challenge for educators over the last year. Instructors have had to navigate the changing schedules and converging home and work lives of both themselves and their students, while also considering new technologies and accommodating varying learning needs. And that’s not to mention the level of fatigue we’re all feeling as this global pandemic has been a source of such nuanced challenges as fear, uncertainty, and financial instability.
So how are instructors approaching assessment in this new reality? Many have renewed their focus on assurance of learning rather than on performance on exams or assignments. In doing so, they have learned to rely on constant communication and flexibility with students. And they’re finding a careful balance between maintaining their rigorous approach to learning while also being empathetic and mindful of what’s happening outside the classroom.
To learn more about Assurance of Learning, you can read an article here.
Focus More on Core Topics and Less on Detail Retention
Managing home, school, and work life has been a greater struggle this year than ever before, so it’s important to approach your assessments with empathy, says Janie Zencak, a lecturer at Central Washington University.
When you are assessing students during such a tumultuous time, you must take these kinds of factors into account. Students aren’t simply missing assignments, failing to make class, or struggling with a specific skill solely because they are not trying.
Lesson learned: Zencak has changed her assignments and assessments significantly over the last year. She now emphasizes the core ideas that she is teaching more deeply, while enhancing that core material with information that is either optional or supplementary. Then, the assessments she gives don’t push the students as hard. “I can’t and don’t expect students to have the same amount of time, attention, or opportunity to absorb the minute details of the material,” she adds.
Balance Academic Rigor with Compassion and Empathy
“It’s a hard balancing act in a virtual setting,” Mike Roberto, the trustee professor of management at Bryant University, says. “I continue to be demanding, while also having empathy and anticipating that students don’t always want to tell me what is going on in their lives. It’s been challenging. But you tend to be more accepting and patient with things like missing assignments.”
Often, students respond well when a professor demonstrates empathy and understanding while maintaining the rigors of the course work. “We did some focus groups on campus this year, and students noted that they were motivated and engaged in courses where faculty demonstrated empathy for their circumstances,” he adds.
Despite his demanding professorial nature, Roberto emphasized the need to take the temperature of the room. “While I don’t typically like excuses, I’ve learned to be more understanding,” he says. “I’m up front. I tell students, ‘We’re all in this together. I’ve never been through this either. You need to let me know if you need help.’”
Lesson learned: Roberto gives his students some extra support by posting sample problems and solutions before exams. “I will also post an old exam with the solutions before I give a major assessment,” he says. “This is very helpful according to my students. Practice, practice, practice is my mantra.”
Roberto also makes a point to temper his feedback with accolades. “When I give a student feedback, I set aside time to acknowledge the challenges of our current situation while naming the things that the student is doing well just to complete the assignment,” he explains. “Of course, I give honest and accurate feedback on their work, but I also take the time to communicate my gratitude for their resilience while giving them opportunities to grow into their own agency and strengths as a learner.”
Stagger Assignments to Provide More Opportunities for Students to Shine
Typically, Roberto assigns fewer assessments with higher stakes throughout a given semester. This past year, however, he’s offered the opposite: more opportunities for students to showcase what they’ve learned.
Roberto delivers his assignments and group projects in intervals. Students show their progress as they’re making it and are given the chance—where they otherwise would not have—to change course at the professor’s discretion or advice.
For example, he split one course project into three parts—focusing on different course concepts in each part—so that students had clear milestones to achieve along the way to a finished product. “Breaking it down into smaller chunks enabled students to demonstrate their mastery of particular elements of the course material and to receive more feedback,” he says. This approach also gave Roberto more time and more opportunities to assess course mastery.
Lesson learned: This interval approach to assessment holds students accountable, Roberto says, but it also gives him the ability to identify problems and suggest tools or websites that may offer them support.
Build Trust and Emphasize Good Thinking
With any assessment, there’s always the question of academic dishonesty. And while virtual learning may offer even more ways for students to cheat the system, this behavior can be discouraged by establishing trust and setting students up for success with assessments that allow them to learn—not just feel pressured to get everything right.
One way Valrie Chambers, associate professor at Stetson University, eliminates academic dishonesty is to reduce its payoff. “If students have to solve a novel case, it’s largely a waste of time to get the answers of other cases from last year’s students,” she says. “If students are asked to express their thought process—to explain how they came up with their answer—plagiarism from online sources might not help them.”
Lesson learned: Chambers rewards students’ thought processes more than their correct answers. “I verbally reward and encourage students who articulate their thinking in class, right or wrong,” she says. While strong, logical thinking is celebrated and singled out more, Chambers also makes it clear to any student who gives her a wrong answer that they are allowing her the opportunity to correct their thought process sooner rather than later—which is brave and demonstrates engagement.
“These are positive traits,” she says. “On a written test, a student who is flat-out guessing would get the same score as my wrong-thinking (but still thinking), brave, and engaged student because they both got the answer incorrect. By creating a safer space for students to be wrong, there’s less shame in incorrect answers and less reason to cheat.”
Above All: Remain Flexible and Focus on Proficiency Over Performance
In a year defined by uncertainty, the academic world has had to be more flexible and more understanding than ever before. Zencak believes this needed level of consideration applies expressly to assessments—and, by extension, to any assignments an instructor gives students throughout a course.
Educators must understand—and then empathize—that some students just don’t have the support systems, emotional maturity, or coping skills necessary to thrive during this unprecedented time, she says. While educators shouldn’t let up on exercising and teaching accountability, they should also be compassionate; students may be missing assignments or lacking focus due to circumstances completely beyond their control.
None of this is simple, but the biggest focus for educators, according to Zencak, should be to make sure students graduate with the tools they need to thrive “in the big world”—not to fail because they were too distracted to grasp concepts, or because they couldn’t connect with their instructor well enough through Zoom.
