Assessment

Assessment is simultaneously the most difficult and frequently accomplished task that we as music educators complete.  Until this point, I have relied on either pencil and paper grading, or evaluations of recorded performances to assess my students summatively.  We assess our students formatively in each rehearsal.  In many ways, rehearsal is formative assessment in practice.  I wish that more teacher education programs approached assessment as pedagogy.  Most of my undergraduate career focused on vocal, instrumental, and general music pedagogy.  Viewing assessment as pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, even separate of the TPACK model, would change the way teachers are prepared for the field.

Marzano's four points addressed by Bauer (Bauer, 2014,  p. 132) are essential to nurturing and encouraging student growth.  The four can be grouped into slightly broader categories:

           1)  Feedback should show students how they are progressing in ways that encourage them to improve.

           2)  Assessment feedback should be given often and during the learning process so that student learning can be maximized.

Since formative assessment occurs during the regular school day more often, I'm going to focus primarily on the mentioned technologies that assist in formative assessment.

The use of electronic forms like SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, and Flubaroo can be used to gauge student progress.  A student "ticket-to-go" or mid-class evaluation in a 1:1 technology school would allow me the opportunity to rapidly assess their progress (and my efficacy) and adjust the direction of my lesson during the middle of a class period.  I really liked the idea of using a student response system.  "The response systems, which are available in dedicated software or web-based forms, aggregate the student responses and quickly let the teacher know if the class understands a topic (Bauer, 2014, p. 135)"  Does anyone have experience using these clicker devices?  Especially given the pervasive nature of cell phones, iPods, and tablets in the educational system, this may be a good opportunity to give students to demonstrate responsible and professional technology use during the school day.

Google is really changing the way that schools can deliver content.  In addition to providing a reasonably functional office suite, it afford teachers the opportunity to share assessment documents (i.e. rubrics) with students well in advance of an actual assessment date.  It is also absolutely free.  Google Forms can be used to create rubrics that can be utilized electronically.  Students can create portfolios on their individual Google Drives and share them with the teacher.  The teacher can make comments on student work (even in real time) with the student.  This technology, if implemented well, could make assessment substantially more streamlined.  As both a formative and summative tool, Google is really making a substantial impact on education!

Our district uses the Pearson PowerSchool LMS products.  It really does make assessment pretty efficient.  I do, however, wish that these software suites interfaced with other programs so that quizzes graded in Flubaroo or Google Forms could be immediately input into GradeBook.  From a time management standpoint, inputting grades for three hundred students daily leaves less time to analyze the collected data.

References:

Bauer, W. (2014). Assessment of Music Learning. In Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music (pp. 130-145). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.