Nadia Williams

ITEC 7500: Capstone & Portfolio

Fall 2015
Standard 2.7
Standard 2.7: Assessment
Candidates model and facilitate the effective use of diagnostic, formative, and
summative assessments to measure student learning and technology literacy, including
the use of digital assessment tools and resources. (PSC 2.7/ISTE 2g)
Reflection:
I created the quiz featured in the artifact EDRS 8900 Quiz for Research on my
own as the assessment tool by which I tested the hypothesis I presented in my
research proposal. In that proposal, I was looking to see if students perform better
on assessments that are presented in a game-type format. In this case, the
students were assessed using the digital tool Kahoot!. My hypothesis was that they
would.
In creating this artifact, I sought to create a quick formative assessment that
featured a couple of different questioning methods while still being multiple choice.
I also worked to create a quiz that addressed a variety of topics that had been
taught in class up to this point. As a result, this assessment was partially
diagnostic, but was more so a hybrid of a formative and summative assessment. It
fell at the end of a unit, however it asked students to consider items such as theme
which had only been briefly explored to that point. This artifact hereby illustrates
the different types of questions I employed including multiple choice and true/false
questions as a means for modeling the facilitation of effective assessment
strategies to measure student learning.
While creating this artifact, I was reminded of how I had come to learn that multiple
choice questions can be a limited method for measuring student learning. In
offering more than one choice, part of a students success could be attributed to the
probability of them choosing the right answer or to their actual knowledge of the
correct answer. Furthermore, in being a teacher of English, I was always very
acutely aware of the need to present and assess students using open-ended or
long-form questions. Unfortunately, while the assessment I created through
Kahoot! helped me gauge my students technology literacy, this type of questioning
did not help me fully assess student learning. My desired goal in the creation of this
quiz for my research proposal was model the use of a technology-based game-style
assessment that would facilitate effective assessment strategies. While I was able
to model and facilitate the effective use of diagnostic, formative, and summative
assessments through this study, my hypothesis illustrated that instead of helping
students answer more accurately, the way in which I developed and delivered my
game-style assessments encouraged my students to be more focused upon
answering quickly than accurately. Should I have the opportunity to do this again, I
would research game design as a learning medium in more detail as I have only

recently learned of the work of Dr. Jane McGonigal who has found that games can
go beyond entertainment and positively affect people. I would have also found as
many ways I could to present each question in a different variation to make my
game-style assessment a more effective diagnostic assessment. For example, I
would have included at least one True/False question, I would have also offered a
sorting option where students would have to put the answer choices in the correct
order. Lastly, I would have worked to find some way of including a gameified
manner for the students to answer some open-ended question.
This artifact had an impact upon professional development. More specifically, my
findings in the creation and utilization of this artifact had a lasting impact upon me.
I realized how quizzes should be varied in the question types offered and that they
also needed to be of the same level of rigor demonstrated in class. This impact
could be assessed by the shift in my approach in what format to use for
assessments for my students. I made sure to offer game-style assessments as
formative assessments or as checks for understanding. I then used those results to
determine my lessons that followed. Since the students did not take a game style
assessment as seriously as they did a more traditional one, I thereby limited my
use of digital tools for formative assessments to iRespond, Socrative, or Google
Forms as those methods helped me recreate a testing environment that was
engaging but not distracting to the students. As for my colleagues, I made sure to
casually discuss my initial hypothesis and assessment strategies with them. I
would hope that our resulting conversations encouraged others to find unique ways
for assessing students. The impact of such encouragement could be assessed in
casually seeing teachers willingness to vary their multiple choice questions. That
said, this artifact provides little in how its resulting effect could thereby be
assessed. I can say with confidence that in the continued meetings I have had with
teachers beyond the school at which I worked, that my colleagues use Kahoot! for
recording general data and do not use it to record data as a fixed measure of
student progress nor do they issue grades based upon the results.