Digital Geography

One of the most thought-provoking discussions (for me anyway) from the Education 2020 unconference was the idea that assessment should allow students to show what they have have learned, rather than what they can memorize. Traditional assessment practice is far too inflexible given the personalization agenda. How for example, can a young film maker or talented DJ demonstrate their achievements, in comparison to a gifted mathematician sitting an A level?

Grasping a somewhat rudimentary appreciation of the various arguments developed at the unconference, I unleashed the question “How would you like to be assessed?” on a Year 8 class that had just completed a long and detailed unit of work on Tectonics. I started by reminding them of key ideas from the unit and asked them to consider how they could show how much they’d learned, one option of course, being a formal test. I was suprised by the range of ideas. Within 10 minutes the class had made 20 suggestions. One student acted as secretary, typing up the ideas on a Power Point slide. Next I invited the class to discuss the merits of each idea, focussing on the need to show a broad and deep understanding of the topic, rather than a specific idea. Votes were cast for each idea. Here is the list with the votes cast (out of 27)

Interpretive dance - a popular and long running joke amongst the students, though a good case was made! (12)
A quiz/game show - possibilities include teacher or students setting questions (5)
Make up a song - song lyrics were considered to be a good way of demonstrating learning (15)
A performance – some kind of play that explores volcanoes and earthquakes (13)
Lego man movie - several of the students are interested in lego movies (15)
Poems – very popular with a few of the most literate students (6)
Radio show - possibility of producing a podcast with lots of appropriate sound effects (13)
Volcano’s got talent – Britian’s Got Talent is already fading from the collective Year 8 memories, so an unpopular idea (3)
Do a biography/story - popular among the same students that enjoy poems (5)
Cloverfield style film - the favourite idea and a possibility with Flip videos. Students felt it suited the topic very well. (16)
Make powerpoints - The idea is that these would be for an external audience and shared on Slideshare (7)
Write a textbook -  Idea is that students would write for a real audience publishing on a wiki (9)
QR code- a combination of QR codes and display, though most couldn’t see any learning benefits (4)
Depicting artwork - idea is to create a complex instructional artwork in a Where’s Wally? style (15)
Model volcano - idea rejected by most because of limited potential to demonstrate learning (3)
Chatterbox – this idea transpired to be an origami project and was then vetoed by the rest of the class! (2)
Human volcano - Influenced by BGT winners Diversity – a street dance with a narration. Very popular, esp with interpretive dance enthusiasts (15)
Big volcano Split it in half - a suggestion to create a huge wall display to show a cross-section through a volcano (15)
Formal test - a good justification made for a traditonal test by some of the class, but quite unpopular with most (5)
Presentation with different media - idea for a structured presentation of at least 5 minutes using various media to develop speaking skills (6)

Ideas with less than 5 votes were dismissed and the discussion turned to whether or not students wanted to work in groups. Most wished to be part of a team, though several students proposed that groups should be able to exercise the right to fire members not pulling their weight. The class decided that they didn’t want to work on the same task – several “Cloverfield” style films for example, would be boring to watch.

It was a very interesting experiment to try. The debate was rigorous and remained focussed on the key idea of demonstrating learning. The message is that most (but not all) students want to work in a collaborative environment, and they also want to demonstrate their learning by creating, rather than recalling. I’m quite happy with that, though I doubt that the exam boards will be featuring interpretative dance as an option any time soon. What’s important now is to get the students to agree on the criteria for a really good piece of work before they embark on their assesment next week.