Electronic Assessment

Teachers have to juggle many things at once.  All at the same time, they have to monitor student achievement, assess progress, and actively engage students in high quality lessons.  This just skims the surface of the many duties of a teacher.   Fortunately, various technology devices can assist in the instructional decisions a teacher must make.

By introducing student response systems, or clickers, to classrooms, teachers now have the ability to monitor progress, receive feedback, and at the same time, actively engage students.  One major benefit of using student response systems is the quick feedback both teachers and students receive.  Student response systems provide teachers with immediate assessment reports of quizzes, tests, or general classroom assignments.  In addition to this, students also immediately receive their score after the assessment is finished.  This makes grading much easier for the teacher.

The real beauty of using clickers, though, is two-fold.  As teachers create the assessment, questions can be tagged by question type, the learning standard, or anything that teachers choose to identify.  After assessments are complete, results are shown to students so that they can make individual goals to strengthen areas of weakness and recognize strengths.

This report generated through the clicker software shows that this student performs poorly in math functions, but is average in abilities with fractions and percentages.

In addition to this quick ability to discern areas of strengths and weaknesses, teachers can also use the student response systems to increase engagement through higher order questioning skills, cooperative learning, and discussion.  Assessment doesn't just have to be an end of unit test or quiz.  Teachers assess everyday throughout each lesson.  By using the clickers to collect opinions and ideas, teachers have just added to their repertoire.  They can instantly poll the class and provide the results to their students in the form of a pie chart, as seen below:

Example provided by SMART Tech.

The differences in each student's answer provides for a learning experience through discussion.  The teacher can instantly take the opportunity to ask students why they favored a chosen answer and, depending on the question, allows for students to recognize other viewpoints and ideas.  This encourages higher order thinking and a deeper understanding of content. 

It is important to remember that student response systems are most effectively used in conjunction with daily lessons rather than as a grading tool.  By incorporating this technology along with teaching practices such as cooperative learning and higher order questioning, our students benefit from a well-planned, highly engaging learning experience.

Students in Jason Weaver's eMINTS room use student response systems to collect data regarding their understanding of various Grade Level Expectations.