Assessment and Grades: Going hand-in-hand?

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Professions find more meaning for employees when they are goal oriented and help them achieve a certain level of satisfaction. Teaching remains no different, where a teacher’s goal is to successfully impart knowledge and skills to their students so that they can apply it in their own ways, with concise understanding of all ideas that entail a subject. A school/college/university considers student performance among several other factors that form the measure of teacher success. A teacher also finds immense pleasure in being able to put their point across to a diverse set of learners, as that’s one of the major challenges that define the proficiency of an educator.

In a typical classroom setting, student performance is generally observed through some form of assessment, against which a metric may be assigned which not only compares a student’s understanding against their past learning level, but also compares the same against that of other students.

In my opinion, it solves two problems at the same time for an institution: It allows a teacher to work on individual students in an effective manner, and it also gives a general idea of growth for a class. Thus a class-to-class comparison becomes possible through the assignment of a simple metric — sometimes a number, sometimes an alphabet — which can then be used to statistically ensure that progress is prioritized not just for a group of kids, but for the institution as a whole as well.

But a metric, or a grade in the language of teaching, is not enough.

Generally, the goal of grading is to evaluate individual students’ learning and performance. Although grades are sometimes treated as a proxy for student learning, they are not always a reliable measure. Moreover, they may incorporate criteria — such as attendance, participation, and effort — that are not direct measures of learning.(“What is the difference between assessment and grading?”, para. 1, n.d.)

Assessment goes beyond grading by systematically examining patterns of student learning across courses and programs and using this information to improve educational practices. (“What is the difference between assessment and grading?”, para. 2, n.d.)

This begs the questions: What should assessment encompass? Are grades a fair indicator of the next steps a teacher needs to take in order improve a student’s learning level?

A look at Authentic Assessments

One of the ways in which a teacher can ensure student improvement through assessment is to transform assessment itself. One such transformation is authentic assessment.

The content of assessment in this case matches the content of the instruction (“What are some types of assessment”, para. 8). Authentic assessments can be embedded in both assessment techniques, i.e. formative as well as summative assessment (“What is the difference between formative and summative assessment”, n.d.). However, authentic assessment differentiates itself from traditional methods as shown below:

Assessment should be deliberately designed to improve and educate student performance, not merely to audit as most school tests currently do. — Grant Wiggins, EdD., president and director of programs, Relearning by Design, Ewing, New Jersey

As shown in the graphic above, authentic assessment consists of the following:

1. Application: Traditional assessment associates itself with a test platform that requires a grade to prove proficiency in a particular subject. Authentic assessments associate themselves with tests that include real world applications. Such tests may be simple indicators of competency in which a student is able to work and solve those applications and problems. They help students prepare for a practical implementation of what they learn, expanding the subject domain in some way as well, as students might want to learn more about the application if they find it interesting.
2. Engagement: Authentic assessments have the ability to involve students in the process of having their knowledge evaluated. This is enabled through relevant activities in the classroom that try to call upon students’ attention. Several collaborative initiatives such as group discussions and maker spaces can help teachers figure out a student’s preferences and interests and their performance in their preferred topic by observing them and acting on their observation and inference.
3. Synthesis: Authentic assessments are rigorous in nature. They are constantly trying and expecting students to make a conscious effort towards their learning. This effort cannot be judged by a grade or any other metric, but the products and responses that students are able to provide to each assessment activity are themselves a part of the feedback mechanism for the teacher to either modify the strategy or observe a set of students closely.

Student performance can be improved in a variety of ways. One of the ways is empowerment (Khare, 2018), where students become the decision makers of their own assessment (“What are some types of assessment”, para. 9).

Empowerment supports collaborative learning. Students decide what’s best for them, and evaluation isn’t necessary anymore, as it may be assumed that everyone will improve through their choices rather than through a teacher’s expectation.

This helps the teacher and the students to find and observe what direction the curriculum should take, and students become active participants in teaching themselves something new and determining if they have fully learnt it too.

What if grades are a necessity?

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I love math. It has been one of the most sought after subjects for me, since I felt that everything makes sense in math and everything has a reason for existence. But more often than not, I have come across the question of its usefulness for someone who does not see their future in the subject and/or in any related field of work.

I never looked beyond books and hypothetical problems in math because I enjoyed what I was doing. But without any real life application to accompany the concepts as well as the assessments, math is one of those subjects where uninterested students may find themselves grinding it out for grades. Also, certain concepts such as algebra and calculus and even a few bits from the number system might have a dearth of practical examples that students can easily relate to. For instance, I asked the following question about integers through A Teacher’s Hat’s Twitter account:

I got a great response from one of the teachers from the online community:

This was followed by a question from me I still don’t have a definite answer to:

I felt that me as a teacher would have failed in the application part of authentic assessments had I been given the task of explaining and assessing the knowledge of integers among my students. Teachers should be lifelong learners (Richardson, 2015), and if I am unable to apply what I learn, be it due to lack of resources or due to a conventional approach towards grasping a concept, I can never succeed in this endeavor.

Instances like these leave no choice but to rely on grades to truly understand if students have learnt something or simply memorized what was taught to them. And the worst bit is, what they learn seems too shallow without practicality.

So what if grades are necessary?

While grades are not acknowledged to be part of program assessment, the way in which one evaluates student achievement can be used effectively to provide a better learning environment. Grades can be used to evaluate the quality of student work, communicate that quality with students and others, motivate students, and guide instructors in the design and organization of courses (Herman, 2013, p. 4).

1. Grades can prove to be a necessary evil in some situations (Herman, 2013), however, I think they can also become a benchmark for quality. The kind of content that teachers can deliver in their classroom can also be evaluated through grades. Grades don’t have to be a metric for students; instead, they can be a metric for the teachers themselves to gauge if what they are trying to teach matches with what students learn.
2. Grades can be used if they provide student-wise flexibility in terms of competition. Some students prefer to not share their grades with their peers, while some prefer to compare and compete in a healthy way. A classroom environment that allows both ideologies to co-exist can support progress for many students without the stress that grades are often blamed for.
3. Technology certainly has a big role to play in moving away from grades. As I mentioned before, topics that cannot be explained easily through practical explanations may use technology to virtually depict how something works. As an engineer, I cannot open up an engine and view its working at the same time, but I can definitely use a simulation that exposes various moving components in action to understand what goes on inside. A similar approach can be adopted in a classroom, based on the number of resources and teacher engagement with modern methods of teaching.

Conclusion

While it’s not possible to eliminate grades entirely, there might be no need to do that at all. The intent with which grades are assigned needs to be changed, and assessment should be viewed as a more reliable source by strengthening the three pillars (Application, Engagement and Synthesis). Students, after all, should involve themselves in assessments knowing that they will gain something out of them, instead of fearing them.

Editor’s Note:

During my years as a Teaching Assistant for a database course, my first lab class was always about building a Entity-Relationship diagram for a video store that sold DVDs of movies. Though the tutorial itself was only a couple of questions, after a term of teaching it as it was, I decided to add some storytelling element to my class: I wanted my students to understand when they would have to build a database for a DVD selling store.

Thinking about it now, I realize not only why the DVD selling store was the very first scenario that the students encountered — it was something everyone could relate to, we all grew up with CDs or DVDs though that will no longer be the case for the generation now. It was an authentic assessment: it gave the students a glimpse into the complexity of the systems we have today, even if they are as simple as keeping track of customers to whom DVDs are being sold.

While teaching Math, my aim is similar: I want my students to understand the practical aspects of what they learn and this is only possible through authentic assessments.

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References:

Authentic Assessment. (n.d.). Williams Centre for Learning Advancement, University of Melbourne. Retrieved from https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/2122687/Authentic-Assessment_d.pdf

Herman, R.L. (2013). Are Grades a Necessary Evil? The Journal of Effective Teaching, Vol-13, No. 2.

Khare, K. (2018). Engagement and Empowerment: How to make them happen? Retrieved from https://medium.com/a-teachers-hat/engagement-and-empowerment-how-to-make-them-happen-de91fd90a9d

What Are Some Types of Assessment? (2008). Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/assessment-guide-description

What is the difference between assesment and grading? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/grading-assessment.html

What is the difference between formative and summative assessment? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

Richardson, W. (2015). From master teacher to master learner. Solution Tree Press.