Last week, I addressed the eSkwela project for helping out-of-school youth and adults finish their formal education (Lee, 2009). I argued that part of the reason the program was successful was because the students wanted to be there. They saw value in finishing their education which motivated them to learn. I finished my post with a question I thought of as I read that article: “What can we do to motivate our students to want to learn?” Children start out in life wanting to learn. They want to learn to walk, to talk, to climb, to read. So, what happens to make them stop wanting to learn and how can we fix it?
This week I read UNESCO’s Report on Mobile Learning in North America (UNESCO, 2012). According to the report, “mobile learning involves more than merely incorporating new technology into current pedagogical strategies; it requires an instructional paradigm shift that promises to fundamentally change the way students learn.”
The article brings up many recommendations for our educational system to fully embrace mobile learning, such as updated policies for mobile phone usage, creating equitable arrangements so all students have access to similar devices and internet speeds, and on-going professional development for teachers so they can embrace the technologies they are asked to use. In addition to these recommendations, I believe how we assess the students on mobile technologies should change, as well.
The internet has presented us with a world of information at our fingertips. With mobile technologies, we can teach our students in a variety of ways using online tools specifically geared to their needs. There are videos, online books, games, even tactile objects that can be 3d printed using designs found online. We use so many of these teaching tools at my school. So why don’t we use them to assess our students?
Many of our summative assessments, which in my content area are worth 50% of a student’s grade, are multiple choice tests. I just heard a teacher this week talk about how students need to work on their test taking strategies for the upcoming EOC tests. Multiple choice is called multiple guess for a reason—you can use strategies to figure out the two most likely choices then pick the most likely answer. Or, in the case of math assessments, you can plug in answer choices until you find one that works. The questions are inauthentic and do not accurately test what students know.
In our Hybrid learning environment, many students in my school take their tests unsupervised. Many have reported to me that they have cheated on tests this year because it is easy to do. Other students send pictures of the multiple-choice answers around. According to the Report on Mobile Learning in North America (UNESCO, 2012), less than half of district administrators feel cheating is a problem. But the report found that one-third of students report cheating with a mobile phone. I find that the latter aligns with what students report at my school. The students are working smarter not harder given the current circumstance. They have tools at their disposal that allow them to cheat, and tests are not something they look forward to taking, so why wouldn’t they just cheat off their friends?
Teachers in my school have given up trying to combat the cheating. For everything you try to stop the cheating the students effortlessly find a way around it. Why fight a losing battle? Why not change the game altogether? As we change the ways students learn, we can also change the way students are assessed. Ditch the multiple-choice tests and make assessments meaningful to students. Make them create something. They cannot cheat when their product must be original. If it is not, everyone, including their peers, will be able to see it immediately. Students take ownership of their learning and their work product when it is their own creation. They protect their work. Students are willing to help others, which is a skill they will need when they leave school, but they are not willing to give up their work. They expect their friends to contribute something of their own.
By allowing students to create something unique to them using their learning, you can assess their learning and leave behind the multiple-choice questions that only test how well they can select A, B, C, or D.
References:
Lee, M. (2009). eSkwela: Community-based E-learning Centers for Out-of-School Youth and Adults, Philippines. In Search of Innovative ICT in Education Practices: Case Studies from the Asia-Pacific Region. https://eskwelanaga.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/the-eskwela-project-a-unesco-case-study.pdf.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 2012. Turning on Mobile Learning in North America. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000216083
Commentaires