Cycle #1: Reflection

How do I as a teacher feel about the co-construction of criteria for assessments?  (Is student learning enhanced by this process?)

This first cycle of reflection related to engaging students in the assessment process.  The intention of this engagement was to give students an opportunity to better understand their learning goals.  Therefore, the process of sharing outcomes and co-constructing criteria would ensure that students understand expectations and are not surprised in the assessment process.  

In this process, students have increased responsibility not only in their assessment of their learning, but they also demonstrated an increased effort in the learning process.  Is any assessment there are criteria that students are measured against.  However, in this process, students were measured by the criteria that they created, which contributed positively to a commitment to learning the necessary outcomes.  This demonstrates that using assessment as a collaborative effort not only has the potential to increase engagement, but also have a positive impact on individual initiative in the learning process. 

This assessment process represents the final stages of assessment at the end of the topic or unit.  If this process can be effective based on largely traditional teaching practices, how much more of an impact with students are participating in challenging, realistic, and thought provoking learning experiences?  The learning goals and questions can be established and learning experiences can be designed to match those goals to provide students a better opportunity to build their understandings about a particular topic or issue.  

Moving forward, it will be interesting to investigate the effectiveness of this engagement in assessment process.  An innovative assessment idea is to reflect on the accuracy of this engagement and if student have the ability to accurately assess their own learning throughout the process.  As well, in what ways can students be encouraged to make the most out of their engagement with assessment practices?