Formative Assessments: Nearpod

Formative assessments are essential in order for good teaching to take place. By finding ways to assess students as the lesson progresses, it will allow a teacher to see deficiencies in his/her students understandings well before a summative assessment takes place. By doing this, a teacher will be able to make decisions while teaching that will allow him/her to adjust the teaching during the lesson rather than waiting to see where the students are at after the lesson or after the unit assessment. The result is that a teacher will be able to save time by not having to reteach entire lessons to students, rather they will have the opportunity to tweak the instruction methods as the lesson progresses to make sure that the students get the most benefit possible from the lesson.

The problem however is, how do teachers know that all of his/her students are comprehending what is being taught? A teacher can only focus on a few students at one time, the result is either they spend most of their time assessing a few students (which will result in being unaware or the progress most of the class is making) or they can check in for a few seconds on numerous students (thus a student may say something right when the teacher is present, but then state their misconception after the teacher moves on.) Fortunately, my school is a one-to-one Chromebook school which can greatly aid my ability to assess students using technology to aid formative assessment.

Nearpod

One possible technology is Nearpod. Nearpod acts sort of like an interactive Power Point or Google slides application, where teachers can present their lessons, but also find ways to engage his/her students in real time though the use of activities. The nice thing about Nearpod is that as long as teachers keep less than 40 sessions, it is free for them to use. Teachers or districts can choose to pay for Nearpod in order to store more lessons, have more memory, and unlock other features.

The "Silver Plan" is their basic plan and it allows teachers to create full sessions, download presenations from Google Slides, insert videos into their lessons, and include numerours types of engagement activities for their students. Of these types of activities, I want to look at two: "Fill In The Blank" and "Collaborate."

"Fill In The Blank"

Out of all the tools on Nearpod which can be used for assessment, the first I want to look at is the "Fill in the Blank Assessment" This activity allows the teacher to create a short paragraph, remove key words, and then ask the students to insert the key words back into the correct position in the paragraph.

Students get a screen where there is a short statement at the top of the screen with key words missing. At the bottom of the screen they see their possible choices.

Students then drag their answers to where they think they belong on the sentence.

Once they have completed the activity, the scores show up on the teacher's screen. In this case, Bruce got 3/3 correct.

While a teacher can quickly assess if a student does or does not understand the concept, there are two problems with this activity. First, while a teacher an learn whether a student understands a topic or not, the activity does not show them what parts they fail to understand. For instance, if a student gets a 1 of 3, which part did they understand? Which parts did they not understand? They also cannot see if all the students have the same misconception and thus need to re-teach one part of the lesson, or if the students are all over the board and the whole concept needs to be re-taught. The second issue is that this is a recognition activity not a recall activity. Teachers will be able to better grasp if students have mastered content when they are asked to recall a concept rather than recognize it when it is presented to them. That leads us to an activity that allows us to solve both of these issues.

"Collaborate"

The second activity that looks promising for formative assessment is “Collaborate.” “Collaborate” allows a teacher to ask a question and students are able to respond by typing out a complete answer and then post it to the board.

Here the teacher has asked a student to describe transmission of light. The student can type in their answer in the box below.

The teacher can review any post that is given. The teacher is also given the name of the student who sent the post. This allows the teacher to know which student may have the misconception. In this case, the student has confused reflection for transmission. 

Once the teacher approves the post, the post is displayed anonymously. Students can then click on the heart at the bottom of the post to show that they agree with it. This gives students feedback from other students. 

The "Collaborate" tool is great in that it allows students to have to recall an answer rather than recognize the answer that many technology-based assessments use. This has been shown to have a more lasting effect on learning than simple recognition and will aid your students' understandings in a more effective manner. The downside to this however is that a teacher will have to spend the time reading through a short answer from all 20-25 students to complete the activity. 

Conclusion

While there are great benefits to using a program like Nearpod for assessments, there can be some challenges. First, not all schools give students one-on-one access to technology. As a result, it might be hard to implement this in a classroom where computer access is limited. However, a similar "Collaborate" activity can be done using a white board and post-it notes, however this does not allow for students to have input on other student's responses. 

Another issue is that a teacher is reliant upon technology working properly, either at the school level or at the student level. There have been a few times during the year where Wi-Fi in the school went down, making it impossible to use technology to teach lessons. So, it is best to have a backup plan in place for all lessons where something like Nearpod is going to be used. Also, there will be times when some students do not have access to technology (the forget their Chromebooks, forgot to charge their Chromebooks, or their Chromebooks are in repair). For situations such as these, make sure to have an alternative to do assessment. Perhaps pair students who do not have access up with another student and have them work together. However, make sure that you are checking in regularly on these students to assess BOTH students. Don't assume both students are understanding the concept because the right answer is posted.