Lesson 1: Student-Centered Assessment

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Hi, welcome back to the VEX Classroom where today we're talking about one of my favorite topics that we have in our VEX IQ STEM Lab, Student-Centered Assessment.

During my 20-year teaching career, probably the most prominent question I would always get asked in every single class was, "Mr. McKenna, is this going to be graded?" I would get frustrated when I got asked that question because that was not the point of the activity that we were doing. But that was the incentive structure that I had in my classroom. The students were just worried about if it was going to be graded and not all the wonderful learning that we wanted them to do during it.

Another example would be when I taught language arts. I would ask my students to write an essay. I would underline things, circle things, write comments, and do all this. I would return that essay back to the students, and they would, of course, flip through, ignore all of the comments, all of my hard work, find the final grade at the very end, take a look at it, and then discard the paper. That was also very frustrating.

But I now know upon further reflection that that was actually my fault, not the student's fault, because my assessment was not student-centered. It was teacher-directed. It was directed by me.

So what we're going to talk about in this video is how we've set these STEM Labs so that you, hopefully, do not have to go through those same scenarios I just described to you in which the emphasis in your classroom is not on the learning and not a final letter grade at the end.

So let's dive into it. How do we actually do it? We have everything laid out here for you, and we have some documentation in our STEM Labs to talk about all this. The whole idea about student-centered assessment is you bring students into the assessment process. It's not something that you dictate to the students, but instead, something that you do with the students.

The number one thing that you're going to get rid of is putting the learning objective on the board, okay? Because when we, as teachers and educators, speak about learning objectives, and we speak of standards and those types of things, that is in a language that our students do not understand. We talk about proficiency and those types of terms like that. Those terms don't mean anything to the students. As educators, I sat in PD sessions where we looked at the standards themselves, and we're like, "We don't know what this means." So how do we expect our students to be able to know that?

So we're not going to put a standard, we're not going to put a learning outcome written in the language of assessment on the board, or talk about that with the students. Instead, we are going to actually co-create what we are going to learn with the students.

So, again, let's dive in and talk about that. Step one, which you've heard me talk about throughout this entire video series, is you're, first of all, going to create clear goals. This is what we do in the introduction of every STEM Lab. We say, "This is the competition that you're going to play after you learn all the wonderful things in the subsequent lessons of this STEM Lab."

What this does is it puts both you and the students on the same page in terms of what success looks like. The robot playing the game, whether you have additions to the robot via engineering, coding, or both. You put each other on the same page so everyone is clear about where it is that we're trying to go. It is impossible to have any type of productive project-based learning lesson if the students are unsure of what success looks like, or if the students feel like they should be working towards something and it's different than what you think. If you are not on the same page, it's just going to lead to problems.

Step one, which we have built into the STEM Labs, is to make sure that you create clear goals for your students. Not clear learning outcomes on clear standards, but clear goals in terms of, "Here is the culminating activity that we're going to do."

The second part is to co-create learning targets. Instead of dictating to the students and saying, "You will be able to do this, or you will be able to follow this, or you will show this," you are actually going to create the learning targets with the students. We'll talk about how to do that here momentarily.

You've heard me talk already about ongoing formative assessment. We have embedded formative assessment throughout the entire course in the form of check understanding questions. You are going to utilize that as you go through it. You're going to then use that to adjust your teaching as needed. The reason why it's called formative assessment is that it forms your instruction that comes afterward based on the evidence and data you get from your students.

As your summative assessment, at the very end, you're going to use conversation-based grading. One of the most impactful things I've learned in the last couple of years is that the most valid reflection of student progress is to have a conversation with them. Just ask them. We often feel that paper and pencil assessments or even computer-based assessments are the best way to gauge what our students have learned. However, research actually says, "If we want to know what our students learn, we should just ask them." That's why we have conversation-based grading there. We'll go into more detail about that in a second.

But right now, let's talk about co-creating learning targets at the very beginning. I'm going to go to a teacher's portal right now for our Robot Soccer STEM Lab that you see here. If I scroll down a little bit, in the "Getting Started" section, we have co-creating learning targets. We have, first of all, why student self-assessment, which I've already talked about. Let me go ahead and select "Co-creating Learning Targets with the Students." This walks you through the steps to be able to do that.

First of all, you're going to establish a shared goal, which I already talked about. We do it in the STEM Lab itself. Then, you're going to determine the essential knowledge the students need in order to be successful in the competition itself. In the previous video, I talked about developing those look-fors. These are the things that you want the students to understand. This is what you're doing right here. These are the big ideas that you want the students to understand as they go through here.

In the actual co-creating of the learning goals themselves, this walks you through the different types of learning targets you have. First of all, knowledge: "What do I need to know in order to successfully complete the Treasure Hunt Competition?" Then reasoning: "What can I do with what I know and understand?" Skills: "How can I demonstrate what I am doing?" And then the product: "What can I make to demonstrate my learning?" These are the categories that you want to utilize when you are co-creating learning outcomes with your students.

We created this great template, which is a Google Doc, that walks you through all that. This is the organizer that you want to use with your students. You do not have to have learning targets with all of these different categories. You don't have to have knowledge, reasoning, skill, and products. You can if you want, but it's dependent upon whatever you want to emphasize in that particular STEM Lab.

Thank you for your attention and dedication to enhancing student learning through these innovative approaches. We appreciate your commitment to fostering a collaborative and engaging learning environment.

You can then have the students co-create those learning targets around those things. Now, what's great about the competition STEM Labs is, obviously, you know, we're going to cover concepts. Like, we're going to cover coding concepts, like loops, okay? And we're going to cover conditionals and stuff like that in a coding-based STEM Lab. So the actual foundational knowledge that you want your students to understand and demonstrate, that's going to be covered. But in addition to that, the students are going to collaborate. They're going to be iterative. So you can include those in the actual learning targets themselves. Again, it's whatever you wanna emphasize in that STEM lab. We don't get what we teach. We get what we emphasize.

Whatever you wanna emphasize in your STEM Labs, that is what you can direct your students towards and talk with them about as you are co-creating those learning targets. Okay? That could be a skill down here that we're going to collaboratively come to decisions better, okay, as we go through this particular STEM Lab, okay? Or that could even be a knowledge-based target. Whatever it is that you want, or the product could be is we all agree on what it is that that's what we're demonstrating. We're demonstrating that we're all able to work well together. So however you wanna do that, you can incorporate that. But this is a really nice organizer that you can use to go ahead and create the learning targets.

Now, what your students should then do is after you co-create the learning targets with the students is they should document that in their engineering notebook. Those are the things then that they're going to reflect upon during those debrief conversations in the compete section. That is what they are going to gauge an understanding on. Are they a novice or the apprentice? Whatever it is, that's what they're going to do during those debrief conversations. They're going to reflect upon the learning targets that they co-created with you. That's how everything works together here during the course of the STEM Lab.

As a result of that, now the students are going to have a lot more ownership over their learning, because it's something that they are doing, and they created with you, as opposed to something that's just dictated towards them. So that motivation, that engagement, is really going to be impactful for you as you implement the student-centered assessment in your classroom.

Now, the formative assessment could be the check-in or standing questions. It could be how the robot performs in the actual practice or compete section. It could be their reflection, their engineering notebook. But you'll take a look at all of that and then use that to adjust your teaching. That's if the students are not collaborating well, if the students having a difficult time, if it's more of an actual knowledge thing with the building or cutting the robot, this is where you can adjust. And this is where then you can utilize the Professional Learning Community.

So if your students are having a difficult time collaborating, or if your students having a difficult time iterating, if they, you know, every time they get feedback, either from another group or yourself, you know, they don't really adjust to that well. And if you're looking for tips on how to improve that, ask us that in a Professional Learning Community. Either ourselves or other teachers from all over the world will be more than happy to have that conversation with you so that you can have some ideas to adjust your teaching as needed based upon the ongoing formative assessment.

You are not alone. You're not by yourself. That's the great thing about VEX Professional Development Plus is we can have these conversations together. And that's why it's a Professional Learning Community, because that's what you're trying to do in a Professional Learning Community.

We are learning from one another to achieve our goals in the classroom. You have that great organizer for co-creating learning targets with your students. You're going to do it in the language of the students, not in the language of assessment. You're going to have your students document all of that in their engineering notebook. Then, they're going to reflect upon it during the compete sections of the STEM Labs after each lesson, then after the classroom competition, or during the classroom competition. Finally, at the end, for your summative assessment, you're going to do this conversation-based grading. Research tells us the best gauge for student understanding is to ask them and to get that understanding from the students themselves.

We have resources for that in the STEM Lab Teacher Portal also. If I go back to the Teacher Portal, I scroll down a little bit further, and I get to this rubric that we give you here. Effective debrief conversations are part of the student self-assessment. Let me actually show this to you in a STEM Lab again. If I go back to the actual STEM Lab, just in case from the previous videos, if you don't remember. If I'm learning "Lesson 2: Manipulators," I go to the "Compete" section here. After I compete, we have this wrap-up reflection right here. This is where you're going to have that debrief conversation with the students. You're going to have the students gauge, "Am I an expert? Am I an apprentice? Am I a novice?" You're going to explain why that is based upon the learning target that they created with you. How does that actually work out themselves? That's what we're talking about here.

First of all, we talk about preparing for the debrief conversation. You want to make sure the students feel comfortable having this conversation. This all goes back to the classroom culture, one of the very first videos that we did in the STEM Lab. Make sure that you create the culture where you can actually do this in your classroom effectively. Then we have some prompts during the debrief conversation, and then we talk about the actual follow-up that you can do with that. That's more of the ongoing assessment as they go to subsequent STEM Labs after this one. Then we have the actual rubric itself. Let me go back to the Teachers Portal and scroll down a little bit further. There's our rubric right here. You have the expert, the apprentice, and the novice. It's a very simple rubric, and you can see we have different categories. This is a Google Doc, and you can obviously change this according to what you are doing in the classroom.

The topic over here is "Collaborative Decision Making." That was a learning target that was co-created between you and the students. You can fill that out into whatever it is that you want to be able to do. The students are able to talk about, "This is why I feel like I'm an expert on collaborative decision making with my team," or "I'm an apprentice, I'm a novice." This is a nice rubric for you to utilize to have that conversation with the student. The beautiful part about this is if a student says that they are an expert on collaborative decision making, or they're an expert on using conditionals and coding in VEXcode, or they're an expert on building manipulators on their robot, you don't just have to take their word on it. All of that should be documented in their engineering notebook, like we talked about. If a student says they're an expert, they can give you the evidence of that via their engineering notebook. They could talk about, "Here is what happened when I was learning conditionals."

Thank you for your attention and dedication to enhancing the learning experience for your students. We hope these resources and strategies will be beneficial in your teaching journey.

Here's how I apply conditionals. Here's the code. Here's the mistake that I made. Here's what I learned from it. Here's how I adjusted.

All of that is in their engineering notebook. So when we talk about using conversation-based grading, it's not just based upon what they are saying to you, but it's in the context of their engineering notebook. They are using your engineering notebook as a vehicle of conversation with you to show you what they have learned and to explain to you why they're an expert, an apprentice, or a novice in any of those categories that we just talked about right there.

Now, is this going to take you more time than just, you know, pass out a worksheet, having them circle answers and turn it back into and you grade it? Yes, absolutely. But education's not about efficiency, okay? This is not about what we can get done in a certain amount of time. Instead, this is about student learning. And if we wanna do student learning effectively, and if we wanna gauge student learning effectively, research tells us this is a very powerful way to be able to do it. And I think common sense just tells us that. Okay?

We know that if we're not sure what we're supposed to be doing, it's going to be difficult for us to be successful. If we are not involved in the process, and the process is just dictated to us, we're probably not going to have a lot of buy-in concerning that. If we don't have an opportunity to explain ourselves, do we really feel like we're a part, again, of the process, and that we feel engaged in it? This is a great methodology for you to utilize in your classroom to avoid, "Mr. McKenna, is this going to be graded?" Because the incentive is not just about a particular output, a letter grade. Instead, it's about an outcome, which is reflected in the co-creation of a learning target which is then talked about during a debrief conversation and memorialized in a student engineering notebook.

So this is a great thing about our STEM Labs is student-centered assessment. We talk about student-centered pedagogy all the time. But we know if you get assessment wrong, you're going to demotivate your students, and you are going to shortcut their learning. This is a very important part of the pedagogy is making it student-centered in addition to the actual teaching itself. So very important part of our STEM Labs.

If you have questions about this, you wanna explore this further, you wanna talk about any of this, let's do a one-on-one session. Ask the question in Professional Learning Community, and we'll be more than happy to be able to answer them for you. But again, student-centered assessments, a big part of our STEM Labs, and I can't wait to see how you're going to utilize it with your students and share it with us in the community.

Thank you very much, and I'll see you in our next video.

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