Online Assessment Data Sparks Professional Learning Communities
Some schools are combining online assessment tools in the classroom with professional learning communities that help teachers interpret their results and understand where they need to improve their pedagogical skills.
Steve Kwikkel, the principal of Clear Lake Middle School (IA), said his teachers have been using an online assessment tool called Naiku that, among other things, allows teachers to do quick formative assessments after lessons. If a significant number of students signal that they didn't grasp a math concept such as distributive property equations, the teacher can ask which part of the lesson was confusing. Then, Kwikkel explained, "The teacher then takes that information to their Wednesday morning interdisciplinary authentic intellectual work (AIW) group meeting of teachers."
In the AIW meeting, teachers make presentations about how they designed activities and the results they got. The AIW group goes through a deliberate process of looking at where in Bloom's taxonomy the lesson falls and whether the lesson met learning targets. "It is a pretty rigorous review of what they've done with students," Kwikkel said. "And this leads to even higher-level reflection that a teacher might need more resources or assistance in developing lesson plans or how they deliver them."
The real-time feedback from students makes this process more relevant, he said. Not too long ago, most schools relied on Iowa assessment scores that involved a significant time lag. "Using digital platforms that give them data in real time is a night-and-day difference," Kwikkel said.
Click the following link to read "5 Tech Tools That Help personalize PD" in it's entirety on THE Journal.com