Empowering twenty-first century assessment practices: designing technologies as agents of change

Abstract

The overarching questions guiding this interprofessional design-based research study are: (1) How might a suite of assessment tools help K-7 educators visualize learning in their classrooms and (2) How might these visualization approaches inform K-7 educators’ changes in classroom assessment? Recognized by their administrators as having previously introduced twenty-first century learning and teaching into their classrooms, seven primary educators (grades K-3) and two intermediate educators (grades 4-7) volunteered to participate in this study. Across three data collections, researchers explored how these K-7 educators perceived an impact to their classroom practices when introduced to a new suite of assessment tools. All K-7 educators reported the importance and challenges of visualizing and capturing individual, small group, or whole-class formative learning artifacts in their classrooms. They reported the following characteristics were important: interactive, personalized, collaborative, creative, and innovative. Reflecting on their brief experiences with the software, the K-7 educators reported more confidence in using the suite of assessment tools. They appreciated working as part of an interprofessional team including researchers, academics, and software developers. Based on these initial findings, the researchers discuss the study’s scholarly significance, position the study within the growing literature, and suggest such opportunities may initiate just-in-the-moment professional development.

Keywords:

• interprofessional teams
• technology-enabled assessment
• design-based research

Additional information

Funding

Funding. This work was funded by Mitacs [IT01970].