Assessment and Feedback: The Right Way?
I recently gave a summative assessment for my Biomed Year 1 students. I've attached a link to the form. (https://forms.gle/uRPcPk3DHRqC11E2A) This was the first assessment that I've designed fully by myself for my students here at Hinkley. This was a final assessment for their Emergencies Unit, encompassing all they have learned. One of the things I appreciate about my CT's philosophy is she allows the students a half a notecard to put information they feel is important on, big ideas, and other things they may want to remind themselves of during the quiz. With this quiz, I tried to make sure each of the lessons had at least 2-3 questions that addressed things we learned and practiced within them. I also tried to have questions that connected across lessons, bringing different objectives together for students to make those connections and apply their knowledge to similar situations. I had a mix of multiple choice, true/false, check all that apply, and short answers to give them a mixed modality of showing their knowledge. I also tried to make sure they were reading through all the questions and answer choices by having the incorrect answers almost seem correct. This could seem tricky, but it's more about getting students to apply those reading comprehension and language skills and be more careful about how they are answering the questions.
Overall, the results were very good! The average score for one class was a 43/60 or 71% for 11 students and a 47/60 or 78% for 8 students. There were a couple of outliers in grades based on attendance, but overall, I'm pleased with their work. Because of the type of questions I utilized, I was able to give even partial credit on some of the questions where they were able to either select a few of the right choices or explain their short answer with most of the points I was looking for. This is one of the responses to the question of what the correct process of putting on a tourniquet is. I gave this a 4 out of 5 points because the student hit all the points, except for writing the time on the tourniquet for the hospital to have that information.
The feedback the students got with this was their grade. Because it was a summative, there wasn't really any other feedback to give, especially since it was the final for the unit we had been working on. They have received feedback on other work they have done throughout the unit, which has allowed them to resubmit the assignmet to earn some points back.
In the next couple of days, I will be giving my Capstone assessment, which is also a quiz. This quiz may be more of a formative, because it is occurring after a few of the lessons to gauge where my students are at with the things we have been learning. I want to be able to see where my students are at, where any confusion may lie, because I can work through those misunderstandings in the next few lessons, scaffolding to make sure they understand where we've been in order to understand where we're going. I want to also give them feedback based on their quiz scores, see what questions they may have afterwards and if they know which lesson they need some clarification on as we move forward. I hope to also compare some CERs they have done in one of their lessons to see their understanding across the different layers of instruction.