Today, I’m talking about alternative assessments for finals. In this time of virtual learning, student choice has never been more important and this idea extends to finals and other summative assessments, forgoing the traditional multiple choice exam and instead using strategies such as project based learning and tools such as choice boards, videos, portfolios and more for students to show mastery of concepts. In other words, alternative assessments determine what students can and cannot do, in contrast to what they do or do not know. So let’s jump in!
If you’ve not familiar with alternative assessments, also known as authentic assessments, let me go over the main objectives. The purpose is to assess students’ proficiency in performing complex tasks that are directly associated and can be easily aligned with established learning outcomes.
They also give students an opportunity to do one or more of the following:
- Demonstrate their ability
- Perform a meaningful task, or
- Receive feedback
While this process can take time and effort to create and assess on your part, you are providing a more realistic setting for student performance and you will see an increase in the quality of work performed by students. Tasks will be similar in nature as to what would be encountered by a real-life practitioner, so it will feel more meaningful to students too.
To further guide students towards success, you will want to pair the assessment description with a rubric for how you will assess and provide feedback on students’ work. There are commonly two types of rubrics: holistic and analytic.
Holistic rubrics provide a single score rating and is used when a single attribute is being examined, containing broad objectives with an overall criterion summary that encompasses multiple skills. Holistic rubrics are best used when there is not a single correct answer and the focus is on the quality or proficiency of specific content or skills. This type of rubric allows for quick scoring, but no detailed feedback. So if you want to assign a score based on an overall judgement of your students’ work, this is the rubric for you.
Analytic rubrics, on the other hand, provides scores for various criteria in a grid, with criteria in the columns and levels of achievement in rows. The teacher assigns points to particular criteria and evaluates student performance in each area. This is useful in providing more detailed feedback in areas of strength and weakness. This type of rubric is used more for problem-solving or application assessments because it can list a different category for each component of the assessment and accounts for the complexity of the task. This is the type of rubric traditionally used when evaluating a research paper because it can include categories for organization, sources cited, depth of content knowledge, etc. So if you want to assign points based on achievement level for several criteria, this is the rubric for you.
But the big question you may be asking is, why give students a rubric at the start of a project? According to this Edutopia article, rubrics help students, “know what is expected of them, and demystify grades by clearly stating, in age-appropriate vocabulary, the expectations for a project. They also help students see that learning is about gaining specific skills and give students the opportunity to self-assessment and reflect on the learning process”. So by giving it to students BEFORE the project, they understand much more what it is you will be looking at, rather than towards the end, when it might be too late to fix something. It’s really just about scaffolding to help students succeed.
Okay, we got the nitty gritty stuff out of the way, so let’s move on to alternative assessments you can design for finals. I’m going to start with online portfolios because if you are considering portfolios in place of a final exam, this should not be the first time you are introducing the concept of portfolios to students. I want to start you before you get started as this is more complex than it seems and is not the right time to implement this. It is something that should be done over the course of a semester or year and allow for students to add to it over time.
If you have leaned in this direction with your students earlier in the semester, but aren’t quite ready to do a full digital portfolio, you may want to look at this art gallery template from SlidesMania. It looks like a real virtual art gallery and gives that portfolio feel. Students could include work or “artifacts” already completed and expand on the assignment, what they would change if they could do it again, or what challenges they overcame while working on the assignment. Another way you can implement this is to give students a list of 10 assignments they completed throughout the course and have them choose 5 that need to be represented in their art gallery and explain why they chose these 5.
Speaking of SlidesMania, it is one of my favorite places to look for templates for Google Slides. Did you know that the site is run by one person, Paula Martinez and that she is not an educator? Paula creates these templates as a creative outlet and all of her templates are free with attribution. She recently started a new site called IconsMania too. I’ve been a fan for a while and marvel at her skills. Back in December, she came out with this new template that features an elevator going to different floors. It’s AMAZING! She was nice enough to answer my question on Twitter about how she created the elevator by showing a quick clip of her putting it together. Again, I am absolutely astonished by her creative skills and the number of ways you can use this one template.
To use this template as an alternative assessment, students could use different “floors” to explain concepts; let’s use Algebra I as an example. The first slide acts as floor number one and represents Expressions and Operations, while the next slide acts as floor number two which represents Equations and Inequalities. Students can explain what these standards and concepts are through text or video.
I could also see students creating their own businesses using this template, that is, based on the course they are taking. I know this is a strategy many of our CTE courses use to help prepare students for jobs they may have after graduation. Students could add different departments with aspects of their business on each slide and floor.
Moving on, let’s talk about videos. All of the ideas I’m about to talk about can be done individually or within a group and can be turned in via your school’s LMS.
One video project students can create is a Top 10 video. Give students an option to select the top 10 most important things someone would need to know in your class. Now I’m not referring to how to turn assignments in or how to survive your class, I mean what were the top 10 things that made students think or concepts they felt were the most important to learn. This can work for a variety of content areas from History to Science, CTE, Electives, and STEM and it makes students really think about all that they covered in class this year and analyze it and rate its value. I’m incorporating choice and voice in letting the students decide which concepts they want to include. You will also still want to be easily available to guide students and ask questions to help them decipher whether an idea is strong enough or not.
WeVideo is the perfect tool to use for several reasons. One, you can have students work on the same video at the exact same time, just like you do in Google Docs. Instead of going straight to creating a recording, go to projects. You can do this and then add students later or have one student create and share out with the other students. Click the PROJECT tab and then click the PLUS SIGN to create a new project. Give it a title and then choose COLLABORATIVE. Next, you can either select students to share the project with or get a link to share. I prefer getting a link because we’ve had a hard time with students finding other students. Click NEXT, and then NEXT again, because we don’t want to add media at this point. Copy the URL to share with the other students and click CREATE VIDEO. Once the other students have clicked the link, it should take them directly to the file, but if it doesn’t, they should click on PROJECTS and then the SHARED WITH ME tab and find the project there.
Another reason I like WeVideo is because students can create the entire project from within the site, using the Stock Media Library to find components or recording themselves or the screen and adding to tracks. They shouldn’t have a need to use other tools. I also like that it’s easy to share and turn in. When finishing, students can choose to export through WeVideo or send it to Google Drive. If they stay within WeVideo, have students go to EXPORTS and download the video or share the link.
However, if you don’t have access to WeVideo, Flipgrid is another good option. In fact, Ditch That Textbook has an entire blog post about how to do this project using Flipgrid. I’ll add the link to the episode notes. If you have Mac computers, iMovie is the way to go.
Or why not have students make a podcast? Instead of having one long podcast, which is really an audio recording, have students chunk the material into shorter segments, maybe 5 minutes in length and have several episodes where they discuss one or two top 10 items at a time. Students can again use WeVideo, Audacity, or Anchor or on a Mac use Garageband to create their podcasts.
Some other ideas for videos or podcasts is to have students make infomercials, skits, or a game show.
Along this line of thought, you may also want to give students the option to choose to create an ebook using Google Slides or Book Creator. Notice how I am incorporating choice again, giving students options from videos, to podcasts, to books. Similar topics, but completely different ways to deliver the final product. Once again, I’ll refer to Ditch That Textbook who has another post on how to create a PDF ebook in Google Slides or watch this video to see it all step-by-step!
While I’ve talked about choices you can give students using specific tools, I haven’t yet mentioned the king of differentiation – the Choice board! I really like this idea because it empowers students to choose an assessment type that is engaging to them, which means you will probably get a more meaningful and thought provoking product from your students. I found a great example of this on the Next Gen Personal Finance site, of all places. It just goes to show you, you can find potential resources anywhere!
Using action verbs such as plot, create, and construct, this choice board lets students pick an idea and then see more information about it and what students will need to include. They can plot the history of a product talking about its history and where the idea came from, who the inventor was, how much it sells for, etc. Actually, this reminds me of a sixth grade project I once did where students did this exact project and turned into a radio advertisement!
Other ideas include recording a tutorial on specific units, in this case the banking unit, describing if a certain bank is the right one to choose and why, or construct a board game based on an assigned topic. If you don’t teach finance, that’s ok as this template is super easy to adapt to any content area. I’ll include the link to the article with the template in the episode notes.
This final exam choice board is very basic and isn’t really even a choice board, it’s more document, telling students to select one of the following four options: write a one page write up and poster, a one page write up and propaganda poster, a year-in-review newspaper based upon a famous headline from the 20th century, or submit all your missing late work!
Or use this final idea, which tells students they can do any combination from creating a magazine layout to a movie review or an interview as long as it adds up to 100.
Now, let’s talk about some non or low-tech options, because your students might just need a break from all that tech they’ve used this year.
Several years ago, I had to take a World Literature course to finish up my endorsement in English and my professor was very big on alternative assessments. While this next idea became one of my favorites as both a teacher and a student, it’s a non-tech option. Have students write an essay inviting 8 – 10 characters from any novel, short story, etc, that was read in class to an imaginary dinner party. Within the essay, I had to write about why I chose these characters, who I would sit next to whom, what questions would I ask them and more. It forced me to make connections between characters and stories and use those higher thinking skills. I loved it, because it helped me highlight a story I really liked and felt moved by, while mostly being able to avoid the stories I hadn’t connected with too.
I don’t know what your school may be like, but at my high school, theater is a pretty popular elective. So why not lean into your students’ passions and allow one of their choices to be to write a script for a play.
While I’ve talked a lot about other types of assessments today, you may not have a choice in the type of assessments you give students. So here’s one more idea if you have to give a more traditional exam: include an “everything I know but wasn’t asked” question. This allows students to tell you more about their knowledge beyond the multiple choice questions they were asked and shows you how much more they may know giving them another way to show their proficiency. Make it worth zero points and instead use the question to only add points and not take away, allowing this question to help, not hurt students.
All of the resources mentioned in today’s episode will be available in the episode notes on Wakelet.
Which of these alternative assessments are you most interested in or can you suggest other alternatives? Leave a note in the comment area!
Ms Priester EDU 