Covid-19: Time to re-think students teaching, learning, assessment

COVID-19 | EDUCATION |

There is little doubt that we find ourselves in difficult and challenging times in dealing with the implications of the COVID-19 outbreak. Our personal and professional lives are restricted and within the education sector, we will need significant changes to teaching, learning, and assessment.

A plethora of robust, well-designed, and increasingly mature digital technologies already exist that if tapped into, could support on-going learning and assessment in times of crisis. In this week's Teacher's Desk, I hope to shed light on some of these, each of which offers practical support for teachers and learners in the here and now.

Yet the same challenges that we face today also offer opportunities for a paradigm shift in the way that we should be thinking about teaching, learning, and assessment delivery in the future. Let us break away from more traditional, less flexible, physical methodologies which, are so prone to disruption in times of crisis.

For starters, all of us as a country are challenged with trying to figure out how effective teaching in this distance learning environment can be delivered, and assessment of student learning is certainly a major factor in the mix that needs re-thinking and developing. If you asked me for advice that would help the government to solve the puzzle highlighted above, I would suggest the following:

1. Prioritizing investment in educational digital technologies

I would passionately argue that on-screen and online assessment technologies are now very mature and can easily be availed to Ugandans if the government chose to prioritize this need. These technologies, coupled with others like e-portfolios, the increasingly sophisticated options for remote proctoring (remote invigilation), and the use of augmented intelligence to support personalised learning, offer truly flexible and highly resilient ways to deal with extraordinary crises like the one that we are tackling now - offering learners education continuity.

Furthermore, by shifting the focus from purely physical delivery methods to online or hybrid methodologies, learners, be they in formal education or professional learning contexts, can be offered ‘assessment when ready' options. This also offers more intuitive teacher management of personalised assessments, significant operational and cost benefits to schools, and generally easier options for supporting times of disruption such as the current COVID-19 pandemic era.

2. Schools should embrace formative assessment of student learning

It is worth emphasizing that educational digital technology opportunities don't just exist for summative assessments, the technologies also exist to revolutionise the learning process, both to address current needs and also to support a more proactive and responsive ‘learning journey' for our learners, that evidences all of their achievements, which is again more resilient in times of disruption.

Here learning delivery can be combined more seamlessly with formative assessments, to provide a flexible and timely approach to learning, where ‘assessment for/as learning' is the default.

I have been communicating, interacting, and conducting formative check-ins with several of my students through Google Class, Google Meeting, Teams, etc Formative check-ins are important as an opportunity for teachers to see where a student is at. This individual check-in will vary from student to student; I understand that there are different realities and challenges that will create a different response to the work assigned. I respect and appreciate this complexity to this new normal. 

Given the reality that some students may be experiencing at home, teachers may need to create lessons that consider voice and choice in terms of how many tasks a student needs to complete. As students progress through the basic, broadening, and big picture process of conceptual learning, students should be asked to explore their understanding of both content and thematic ideas as developed through the several tasks they completed.

Schools should be using the Basic, Broadening, and Big picture (BBB) method to focus on how to learn conceptually, with the goal of helping students to understand the Big Picture for the curriculum outcomes. Embracing this approach targets the need for students to critically reflect on their performance and then work to excel; to perform better. This emphasizes students' capacity to grow, to achieve better, to visibly see their learning.

The focus highlights the student's growth instead of his/her performance on an individual task.  Teachers should concentrate on the student's ability to navigate through their learning with the goal of building on their expectations and confidence.  Again, instead of focusing on how individual tasks may increase or lower your student's mark, teachers will focus on his/her growth, on his/her ability to self-assess, on his/her ability to learn. The goal is to build their confidence in learning and developing the needed skillset for next year's class or real-world.

3. Government, schools, parents, students, and others should create opportunities for positive change

By embracing radical changes now, we offer options for the whole education sector to deliver approaches that are truly designed with 21st Century learners in mind. In so doing, we not only future proof our education system, but also offer significant benefits to all education stakeholders, particularly the learners, through fit for purpose approaches to learning and assessment.

The potential here is to banish the ‘big-bang' approaches to summative assessment, where hundreds of learners sit in drafty, poorly lit rooms at uncomfortable desks within pre-set assessment windows at the same time each year, a model that, as we are seeing, is significantly prone to disruption.

Of course, it's not just a case of having access to the technologies to support these innovative approaches, it is also about shifting our curriculum policies to be less driven by yearly and termly cycles, which in turn will require political will. However, often it is in times of significant disruption and forced change, such as the one we are experiencing now, that we get a glimpse of what is possible, not only to be better prepared for such periods of crisis but also to better support teaching and learning in general.

Now, more than ever, we need to build approaches that not only help address the short-medium term challenges of the current crisis, but that also provide insight and exemplars of a possible way forward, which more fully embraces technology to deliver learning and assessment approaches fit for the 21st century and more resilient in times of disruption.

The writer is a Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University in Kampala, an Education thought-leader, award-winning best-selling author and an international curriculum expert.