This Tuesday 17th, I did a webinar on digital assessment. This post intents to be a handout for those teachers who attended it.

Digital assessment allows teachers to give students helpful feedback (formative assessment), to encourage them to do better and better (ipsative assessment, provides learners with feedback from fellow students (peer assessment), gets them to understand their own progress (self-assessment) and allows them to use their tools (21st century assessment)

Digital tools can be used both to design assessment activities and to assess learners’ performance in any kind of activity (digital or not).

Here are some examples of assessment activities which integrate the use of technologies: collaborative mindmaps (mind42.com)  to demonstrate full understanding of a topic, audio forums (voxopop.com) to discuss ideas presented in the unit, interactive timelines for History (or other subjects) projects (dipity.com), interactive games which provide immediate feedback related to any topic (we saw: Save the world and Pyramid builder, infographics as a final product of projects (piktochart.com).

Some of the digital tools to assess learners’ performance that I presented are ePortfolios, rubrics and checklists.

According to Dr. Helen Barrett (2009), “an ePortfolio is an electronic collection of evidence that shows your learning journey over time. Portfolios can relate to specific academic fields or your lifelong learning. Evidence may include writing samples, photos, videos, research projects, observations by mentors and peers, and/or reflective thinking. The key aspect of an ePortfolio is your reflection on the evidence, such as why it was chosen and what you learned from the process of developing your ePortfolio“

Check Dr. Barrett’s website for more information on ePortfolios.

Students can create their ePortfolios with EduPortfolio  or by creating a blog (wordpress or blogger) while teachers have different options to keep all their students’ portfolios organized and at hand, such as Netvibes or a list of blogs in their own blog.

“A rubric is a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor” (Heidi Andrade). Two good websites where we can find ready-made rubrics or create our own are Rubistar and iRubric. Check this tutorial on how to create rubrics with Rubistar.

Rubrics, when given at the beginning of a project or unit of study, promote thinking and learning by providing guidance to the students who know right from the beginning what we expect from them. Creating the rubrics with the students helps to get them involved in their own learning too. Rubrics are a good tool to assess projects and their final products, oral and written assignments, group work and collaboration.

Checklists to support Project Based Learning can be created online too.

To all the teachers who took part in the webinar, THANK YOU SO MUCH! It was a pleasure. Feel free to leave comments and ask questions.