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PROMPT: Please simplify the following questions so they make sense to younger children some with English as a second language:

Reflective Questions to Support Assessment
Capable Students
1. What new understandings do I have?
2. What connections have I made?
3. What am I still wondering?
4. What new skills have I mastered? What skills might I need to work on?
﻿﻿5. What strategies have I used? What strategies have I learned that I can use in future?
﻿﻿6. What patterns have I noticed? How might I apply what I learn from them?
7. What might my next steps be? How might I approach things differently next time?
8. What strengths have I noticed in myself and others?
9. What challenges might I need to overcome?
10. Who might be able to support me? How might I support others?
12 What have I noticed about myself as a learner?

For younger children, especially those with English as a second language, the questions can be simplified as follows:

Capable Students
1. What did I learn?
2. What things are the same or linked?
3. What do I still want to know?
4. What can I do now? What do I need to practice more?
5. How did I solve problems? What new ways did I learn to solve problems?
6. What things look the same? How can I use that?
7. What will I do next?
8. What would I change next time?
9. What am I good at? What are others good at?
10. What is hard for me?
11. Who can help me? How can I help others?
12. What do I know about how I learn?

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Integrated Assessment - Teacher Reflection

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Integrated Assessment - Teacher Reflection

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Goal: To convey specific meanings or themes through storytelling. This serves not only as a creative platform but also ignites their passion for creativity and expression.

Role: Students take on the role of writers, responsible for crafting stories.

Audience: The audience for these stories includes classmates, teachers, and parents.

Situation: Students now belong to the Tiny Creativity Press, where they have the opportunity to create unique and engaging stories. They challenge editors to become part of a children's book series. Selected students will witness their stories becoming real books and receive a "Tiny Writer" certificate.

Product: The final product is the stories created by students, which can take the form of books, picture books, digital stories, and more.

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ADAM GRADE 5

Unit: Media & Advertising

G - Goal: Create a subvertizement, or a critical advertisement that will identify the lies or deceitful advertising of a corporation

R - Role(s): A) You are an investigative reporter for a News Conglomerate; OR B) You work for a guerilla marketing company and have a contract with a client corporation to beat out another competitor

A - Audience: Your audience is either the general public, your editors, or your manager in the marketing agency & the client corporation.

S - Situation: You need to uncover the truth of a corporation's unethical activities, either for a news agency, or for your work as marketer.

P - Product: Create a subvertizement, which is usually print media, A3 size paper or bigger, well designed with a clear and concise message to critically expose the actions of a corporation.

S - Success Criteria: The subvertizement needs to be at least A3 size, with a clear mock-slogan or short phrase, clear & edited imagery to evoke a critical assessment of the corporation's activities, and at least a 5-6 sentence paragraph on the reverse side explaining the unethical or immoral actions that the corporation made. Truly exceptional or advanced work will include sources.

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G6 Where We Are In Place And Time (Adi&Colin)

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G6 Where We Are In Place And Time (Adi&Colin)

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Goal: Students will have a deeper understanding about the use of symbolism in paintings during the Renaissance.

Role: Artist

Audience: The visitors of the art exhibition.

Situation: You are now an artist from the renaissance. Show in an still life painting symbolism where you display the struggle of the time you were living in.

Product: A painting and a video explanation.

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These assessments increase student accountability and provide a way to personalize learning without a lot of extra time and effort.

Student-designed assessments and personalized learning are two popular trends in education that often come across as complicated and overwhelming for many educators. These practices are difficult to figure out how to begin, but there are practical ways to incorporate them without requiring a lot of additional prep time through a focus on simple student-designed assessments.

Student-designed assessments are where students have a say in how they will be assessed and/or what will be on their assessment. In this case, simplified student-designed assessments are those that do not require any additional technology nor in-depth planning on the part of the teacher. Instead, these assessments are created in 15-20 minute chunks in the class period and do not require the use of new platforms, technology, or complicated steps.

There are three useful and practical methods I use on a regular basis in my classes that are effective, no matter the students' level or age, and are applied across different content areas.

3 Means of Student-Designed Assessments

1. Pick and choose. This is good for the class or teacher who is new to this concept. As you approach an upcoming assessment, give students a series of practice questions (or tasks). Have groups identify a few questions that they feel everyone should be able to do (the "baseline questions") and others that would be a challenge-but doable (the "challenging"). Then, quickly scan what they chose and compare it to what is already on the assessment or what is planned.

Do the students seem to understand what they should know? If yes, then the assessment could go well. If not, perhaps some re-teaching or extra review would be necessary.

2. Create a question/task. This is similar to the task above, but with more creativity. Have students think of a topic that you have been studying. In small groups or pairs, students actually generate a few questions, prompts, or tasks in the same categories mentioned above: baseline and challenging. They can submit this to you through small groups or as part of a whole-class meeting. You can use these to generate your questions for the assessment.

What universally surprises educators with this approach is that students can identify what they all should know and recognize doable challenges as appropriate assessment questions. When they take the assessment, there is a stronger sense of accountability-since they had a part in generating it. I have found that, as a result, they will give very thoughtful and engaged answers.

3. Rubric descriptors. This one can be tricky to do with some classes, and I would suggest doing this after you have done one of the activities above. You give groups a blank rubric for an upcoming performance-based assessment. Have students come up with bullet point items of what "meets expectations" looks like. Then, as a class, you discuss those, and you can generate a descriptor for that section of the rubric together.

Depending on the class' ability to focus, you then fill in the other sections of the rubric. When students actually do the task (where they will be graded on the rubric), there's a stronger sense of what they should be able to do since they created the expectations.

Benefits and Challenges

There are some obvious benefits to incorporating simple student-designed assessments into your pedagogical practice.

Ownership. While you obviously may need to gently nudge students to appropriate questions or rubric descriptors, this allows students to feel that they have a voice in the process.

Demonstration of knowledge. Creating an assessment allows students to show what they understand and is an assessment in and of itself. Even if students are identifying potential questions, they are still showing that they understand what's relevant to the topic of study, and this requires critical reflective skills.

Time efficiency. Making assessments can be time-consuming, as is re-teaching content when students do not perform well on assessments. Therefore, taking any steps at the onset to mitigate either of these outcomes can be beneficial for teacher and student alike.

There are also obvious challenges to implementing this into a classroom, but the good news is that these can be overcome.

Knowledge of content area. Students may feel that they are unable to generate questions for an upcoming assessment due to their lack of knowledge about the content area. However, with guidance from classmates, most students should be able to at the very least identify questions or tasks that they should be able to do.

Lack of curriculum control. Some educators don't have a lot of control over what will be on an assessment, so letting students design the assessments is challenging. However, the process discussed here could then be used as a way to review topics that will be assessed and you can reinforce those critical topics through discussion.

Tips for Implementation

Interested in giving this a try? Here are my best suggestions for incorporating student-designed assessments in your classroom on a regular basis.

Start small. For many educators, the first option of picking and choosing questions is the easiest.

Be concise. This does not need to be an extensive classroom activity. Allot 15-20 minutes maximum for the activity, and move on with the rest of the instruction.

Use the questions. If you want to create buy-in and ownership in the process, the students need to see that their feedback is useful.

Make it timely. Do this enough in advance to address any confusion or be willing to adjust the date of the assessment.

In conclusion, a more personalized learning (and assessment) experience does not need to be complicated nor stressful. As educators, it can be difficult to relinquish some of the control that we have in the classroom. However, perhaps sharing some of this control with our students can lead to a more personalized and engaged experience.

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These assessments increase student accountability and provide a way to personalize learning without a lot of extra time and effort.

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Project: Plan and complete a music concert at a local orphanage

UOI: How we organize ourselves

·       Caring

·       Organisation skills

G: Provide a wonderful experience for the children at the orphanage (with the concert)

R: Students as planners and performers

A: Children and staff of the orphanage

S: Giving the children the opportunity to enjoy music performances

P: Enjoyable and fun concert experience

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How to create assessments that drive learning

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How to create assessments that drive learning

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When I began teaching 3rd grade, my assessments included observing, conferencing, designing investigations, giving quizzes and tests, and administering required standardized tests. While some of these assessments were useful in improving student learning because I could immediately determine what students did or did not know and take action on what they needed next, I often ignored results I couldn't immediately use because all I had was an overall score or grade for the assignment. In those cases, I just moved on-assessment evidence from selecting the correct multiple-choice answer or completing a memorized routine told me little about a student's ability to transfer learning to a new situation.

It took me several years to deepen my understanding of what makes an assessment "actionable" and how best to use assessment results. My shift in perspective was due, in part, to taking graduate courses in more complex approaches like differentiated instruction and student-designed investigations. To make a long story short, I learned that the most important use of assessment wasn't simply for grading but for getting feedback to support the learning of each student.

Actionable assessment is most powerful when used as part of a cycle. As shown in the figure below, an actionable assessment cycle that consists of establishing a series of increasingly more complex learning targets, engaging students to uncover their thinking related to each learning target, and eliciting observable or measurable evidence to indicate how close they are to fully meeting success criteria before moving on to the next learning target.

Imagine for a minute you are using poorly designed assessments to inform ongoing learning or assessments that don't build upon earlier ones. With such assessments, gathering evidence to determine the next steps for instruction, strategically scaffolding learning, helping students reflect on their own progress, or deepening understanding are next to impossible because you have only uncovered what students have memorized, not the skills and concepts they can transfer to the next learning situation. By contrast, in a cycle of actionable assessment, new learning builds on earlier learning with feedback loops built in along the way. The cycle consists of seven main steps:

1. Clarify learning targets. Start with the broad learning goal of a unit of study, such as: Students will use multiple sources to analyze a topic in order to develop and present an evidence-based argument. Next, create a series of learning targets to frame lessons (from foundational/prerequisite understanding to deeper and more complex learning). Sample learning targets might be:

2. Select short-cycle tool(s). Use actionable assessments ​​for each learning target, helping students build schemas and deepen knowledge. These assessments can take a variety of forms. For example, using an anticipation guide uncovers background knowledge and possible misconceptions about a topic prior to reading; as students read for supporting evidence, they can take action by confirming or refining their thinking and reasoning. Sketchnoting-taking notes using drawing and labeling-encourages students to identify information they see as most important, connect prior learning to new learning, and continually refine their understanding as they deepen knowledge on a topic and add to the sketch.

3. Engage students, uncover thinking, document evidence. Document learning evidence fluidly during instruction, using everything from discourse checklists, peer conferencing, reflection journals, and observing group investigation activities. Reflection activities are critical to driving learning forward.

4. Interpret evidence and frame feedback. Analyze evidence to see what connections students are making when they talk, role-play, solve problems, draw, or use manipulatives.

Actionable assessment checkpoints and rubrics designed to describe how learning moves forward are useful in showing students where they are now and where to go next. Teaching students how to give feedback to peers and how to self-assess and monitor their own progress increases the impact of actionable feedback on learning.

5. Determine next steps to advance learning. Identify students needing additional scaffolding (e.g., for language development, executive functioning, deeper understanding) and others who are ready to move on to more complex tasks with minimal modeling or guidance. Some students will benefit from working one-on-one directly with the teacher, while others can work independently or with peers. These decisions free up "teacher time" and focus efforts where they are most needed while giving students some control over their learning. Learning menus or station rotations that differentiate tasks can provide opportunities for student choice and voice and encourage short-term goal setting and progress monitoring.

6. Use performance tasks to assess transfer and deepen learning. Once students have demonstrated progress using short-cycle assessments, it's time to integrate academic skills and concepts into assessment tasks that may take longer than one or two class periods. These can include problem-based tasks, teacher-guided projects, and student-designed investigations. Plan for several rounds of open-ended performance tasks, starting with shorter "scrimmages" that prepare students for the "game-like" and more complex performance tasks. For each performance task, document evidence, scaffold where needed, and frame feedback to advance and deepen the learning. This process is represented as the smaller loop within the Actionable Assessment Cycle, meaning that there will be several opportunities for students to address the most complex learning targets: transferring skills/knowledge, engaging in individual and small group work, and practicing peer- and self-assessment.

One approach is to begin with a teacher-guided performance task or self-assessment used as a model for the whole class. Next, move to similar small group tasks with more choice options in the next round; and finally expand the scope of the assessment tasks with both collaborative and independent components. Build in opportunities for students to use feedback loops to improve the quality of their products.

7. Interpret evidence, determine new targets that build on prior learning. At this point in the Actionable Assessment Cycle, learning has been documented along a progression of increasing complexity. You have generated evidence of students' learning using multiple assessment tools and formats so that every student had opportunities to demonstrate learning. Some of this evidence was used formatively to document progress; and some was used summatively for grading and reporting. It's now time to consider how this learning can be built upon as you move into the next unit's learning and assessment cycle.

Assessments take many forms and have many different purposes; however, the primary focus of assessment should be to advance student learning. Weaving together important teacher moves-asking probing questions, building schemas, strategically scaffolding, designing complex tasks, and engaging students in metacognition-creates a coherent actionable assessment cycle that can drive learning forward in any classroom.

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How to Create Assessments that Drive Learning

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Treating assessment as a cycle gives students the tools they need to understand what they've learned, how they've learned it, and who they are as learners.

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Whether receiving great comments for a job well done or getting a rebuke for a task that is not perfect, humans constantly run into the feedback loop that ultimately dictates how well or poorly they evolve.

The concept of feedback or feedforward culture has been discussed since 500 BC, when Confucius spoke about the "power of communicating but not communicating."

Up until now, feedback is still one of the most contentious issues in all formative assessments, according to Ruth butler. Many (parents, teachers, or CEOs) are still confused about how feedback or the feedforward culture truly works. If you're in this category, you should read this article till the very end; you will probably find a reason to form a better feedforward mechanism that is productive and not mere comments.

Describing feedback and feed forward in classroom activity

Now let's get straight into it! My sixteen-grade son once shared his experience on this subject. Although he has a clumsy view of what it is. His description perfectly illustrates the feedforward culture and how it plays a significant role in the student learning experience.

He spoke of his class teacher, "X," who only sent comments with grades and ended it with a compliment, and another teacher, "Y," who spent another few minutes discussing comments and how to improve in the future. He said both were great at their jobs, but one helped him to be better than the other.

When an employee or student receives feedback, it is usually regarding their performance on a recently completed assignment or a task that is still ongoing. On the contrary, feedforward is the inverse of feedback. It is the process of substituting excellent or negative feedback with solutions for the future. Simply said, it is usually forward-looking rather than backward-looking

Instead of citing examples of how a student's response to a question has proven to be less effective in previous exams or a just-concluded assessment (feedback), the student should instead be given suggestions, recommendations, and encouragement on how to handle a similar question in the future (feedforward).
Why should care be taken when providing feedback?
A flawed evaluation setup that talks more about the past may promote rote learning over real learning and ultimately hinder the maximization of learners (student, trainee, or employee) potential. Research has shown that most students or learners ignore feedback they receive because they do not associate any value with it. After feedback, students or employees often get excellent ideas for improvements regarding a task or class activity. Still, they cannot make the appropriate changes that will lead to improvements since the feedback makes it look as though all concerns are necessary only in the past.
Why should feedforward culture be imbibed?
What's amazing about the feedforward culture is that everyone is focused on supporting one another to improve in the future. Many times the feedforward is usually straightforward and nonjudgmental. It is forward-looking rather than backward-looking.

In a classroom environment, students are driven to work hard and learn from a project, even if it merely demonstrates their progress in class. They will also learn to ask for input and listen without feeling judged.

Here are some overall reasons to try the feedforward culture:
1. Feed forward is forward-looking rather than backward-looking.
The feedforward culture ensures that students and employees receive information about improving their future instead of focusing on the past. This culture helps students or trainees to drive positive change in future engagement.
2. Provides Real Solutions and Ideas
Unlike the feedback culture that most trainees or students take as a discussion that is only about past events, the feedforward culture help student find a way around similar problems and how to solve them in the future. Therefore, the comments are often taken without any negative feeling, a tactic from excellent leaders to help people do better in such areas or environments.
3. No real Judgment
The feedforward culture does not pass judgments and does not utter students or trainees' emotions negatively. Ruth Butler described it as a judgment-free exercise that can empower rather than condemn. When done rightly, the feedforward culture often opens students' eyes to the need to perform better while teaching them what they can do to improve.
4. People Feel Pleasured Rather than Pressured with FeedForward.
Generally, students, trainees, or employees do not like getting negative feedback, whether they are given softly or in a harsh tone, regardless of the givers' intention. This often affects the personal relationship negatively, particularly among classroom students. With the feedforward approach, trainees or employees often gain insights into what makes them better, which generally translates into an enjoyable experience.

Why practice feedforward in Organization or classroom?

Learners often misinterpret feedback and its ideology, and instead of improving students' performance in the future, it obstructs students' or trainees' learning opportunities. This is in contrast to the feedforward that opens learners to various learning opportunities and possibilities for growth in the future. It helps learners identify errors and solutions and strengthen them emotionally to get solutions and improve.

One of the significant components of the feedforward mechanism is interactive learning which often involves a regular discussion and engagement between student and their teachers or the boss and employee. It focuses the scope of discussion on improvement.

A scenario where teachers sit with the student individually to discuss the way forward in areas of their academic challenge is more productive than assuming students would rightly get messages from comments on score shits or annual reports in the case of employee-boss relationship.
In conclusion
The culture of feedback or feedforward interestingly determines the future outcome of all assessments. Feed forward is a constructive reinterpretation of feedback that eliminates certain inapt aspects in the latter. It is important to note that in need to increase trainees, students, or employees learning out all assessments to be forward-looking and presented to motivate the student to perform better in the future rather than appearing as a mere comment on what has gone behind.

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Feedback vs. Feedforward culture- What will you choose?

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Whether receiving great comments for a job well done or getting a rebuke for a task that is not perfect, humans constantly run into the feedback loop that ultimately dictates how well or poorly they evolve.

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Providing feedback

Automated instant feedback from say, Canvas quizzes, H5P activities, and Perusall can provide 'self-check' questions for formative feedback,. They usually allow students to re-test themselves until they feel confident.

Quick-marking tools such as SpeedGrader or CrowdMark (and their ability to annotate PDFs), and Canvas rubrics, can make life easier. Some tools also offer a comment library that allows markers to save and reuse common feedback comments.

Provide generic feedback to the class, alongside a short, personalised comment to individuals. This can help with marking workload while giving students an idea of what good quality assignments look like.

"I was impressed by the extent to which some of you researched this question. On the whole most of you managed to identify .... which were.... The best answers were those that ...."

Record an audio or video of you speaking to the student about their work. This is more personal and they are more likely to pay attention. For example, Andrew Eberhard uses screen casting but audio and video feedback can also be created in Canvas' SpeedGrader.

"You did a good job of comparing ... a little more reference to theory and research would have further strengthened this."

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Feedback and feed forward: developing lifelong learners

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Develop students' own judgement and self-regulation by providing ongoing opportunities for formative feedback.

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What does it mean to be assessment capable?

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What does it mean to be assessment capable?

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Whenever two terms are juxtaposed like Feedforward Vs. Feedback the natural tendency is to ask which is better, or which term or related method will give us what effects or lead to what consequences. I am going to argue that we want to move toward feedforward rather than fall back on feedback. Why? Feedforward is the formative process of providing educative (Fink, 2013) or forward-looking perspectives (Goldsmith, 2009 & Hattie, 2009) that one can use to build on or improve. Feedforward points to opportunities and provides pathways for improvement and growth. In contrast, feedback is summative because it is backward-looking at what was wrong. It doesn't generally provide pathways to improvement. At least in the more traditional way that feedback is applied.

We are recommending a move from feedback to feedforward that will include the following :

Consider the receiver not just the giver of feedback

Equip the receiver with a growth mindset

Build a culture of trust

Adopt a "What worked & What can you do better" approach to feedforward

Create a significant learning environment that promotes choice, ownership & voice through authentic learning opportunities

Feedforward Vs Feedback Overview
Download and view the Feedforward Asynch.pdf

What evidence is there to support this claim and the recommended process?

We have one of two options when exploring the credibility of these or any claims. The first is to read all the related literature and conduct a detailed analysis that will inform a conclusion and related pros and cons. The second is to find someone who has done this analysis and has summarized the analysis in a tutorial, or a synthesis post like this one.
Considering the Receiver First The Science of Receiving Feedback Helping your Learner Adopt a Growth Mindset
Fixed VS Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

The power of believing that you can improve | Carol Dweck

The Power of belief - mindset and success | Eduardo Briceno | TEDxManhattanBeach

Growing a Growth Mindset
In the post How to Grow a Growth Mindset, I point to the key factors and research that show that promoting a growth mindset like one would promote a positive mental attitude will not work and that the growth mindset requires modeling and a significant learning environment that promotes this perspective both in spirit and in structure.

You will find a very useful Fixed vs Growth Mindset graphic and a short comparison of how the Fixed Vs Growth Mindset is equivalent to the Print Vs Digital Information Age on the blog post Fixed Vs Growth Mindset = Print Vs Digital Information Age

Obviously Carol Dweck's book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success is definitely worth the read and should be one of those books that all educators have on their bookshelf or in their Kindle or Audible library.

Learner's Mindset
Learner's Mindset - a state of being where people act on their intrinsic capacity to learn and respond to their inquisitive nature that leads to viewing all interactions with the world as learning opportunities. This state enables one to interact with and influence the learning environment as a perpetual learner who has the capacity to use change and challenges as opportunities for growth.

To fully explore the Learner's Mindset and see how it is different than the growth mindset or the Innovator's Mindset consider the following:

Learner's Mindset Explained
Reignite Your Learner's Mindset
Going Deeper...
Growth Mindset | Never vs Not Yet
Feedforward: Coaching For Behavioral Change
How to Give Feedback to Students
Feedback & Feedforward
Why CSLE+COVA
CSLE+COVA Research

References

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Penguin Random House.

Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. Jossey-Bass.

Goldsmith, M. (2009). Take It to the next level: What got you here, won't get you there. Simon & Schuster Audio/Nightingale-Conant.

Goldsmith, M. (2003). Try feedforward instead of feedback. Journal for Quality and Participation, 38-40.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(81), 81-112.

Hirsch, J. (2017). The feedback fix: Dump the past, embrace the future, and lead the way to change. Rowman & Littlefield.

Stone, D., & Heen, S. (2015). Thanks for the feedback: The science and art of receiving feedback well (even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and frankly, you're not in the mood) (Vol. 36). Penguin.

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Whenever two terms are juxtaposed like Feedforward Vs. Feedback the natural tendency is to ask which is better, or which term or related method will give us what effects or lead to what consequence...

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What happens when students design their own assessments?

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What happens when students design their own assessments?

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With classmates, parents, teachers, and even the Roanoke County schools superintendent standing before him, high school senior Bubba Smith took a deep breath and set the two-story Rube Goldberg machine into motion.

The contraption, which performed a series of complicated actions to lift a banner, was part of Bubba's fourth-quarter grade for his AP Physics class. Students in physics and the AP Calculus class worked on the machine for nine weeks and then presented it during Hidden Valley High School's end-of-year exhibition of students' projects, most of which they designed themselves.

"We were doing stuff we don't normally do in a classroom," Bubba said of his project. "We don't play with PVC pipes and ropes in the classroom."

His classmate Ryan Crosser agreed. "A normal project is the same thing over and over again. It's very structured-school is very structured," he said.

Student-led assessments like this one are, in many ways, antithetical to the structure of the typical fill-in-the-bubble test. Students are asked to demonstrate their learning and knowledge in a meaningful way and to reflect on their own performance.

Nestled in the heart of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, the Roanoke County district has joined 10 other districts in the state that make up a Networked Improvement Community focused on implementing student-led assessment to bring about a deeper level of learning. The community is underwritten by the Assessment for Learning Project, a multiyear $15 million grant-making and field-building initiative led by the Center for Innovation in Education at the University of Kentucky.

The project, supported through private philanthropy, is seeding 17 cutting-edge approaches across the country that vary in size and scope, to better understand how assessment can play into a more personalized, student-centered, competency-based learning process.

"The way we've been thinking of assessment that is driven by accountability-assessment with a capital A-isn't delivering on the kind of learning and the kind of relationships that kids really need to succeed," said Sarah Lench, the project's director. "There's a broader definition of student success than proficiency on English and math tests."

Getting Teachers on Board

In Virginia, the 11 districts involved in the network are all grappling with different student-led assessment questions, including which grades to start with and what the assessment itself can look like. But the community has highlighted some key themes to guide its work: The assessment process must be meaningful to the student. The student receives feedback throughout the process, not just at the end. The student clearly demonstrates learning or growth. The student assesses his or her work. And, above all, students should be active participants in the assessment process.

One of the biggest challenges of this work is changing people's mindsets, said Shannon King, the manager of the Best Practices for Teaching & Learning program at the Fairfax County school system, which oversees the 11-district community.

"Teachers have to be willing to give up control and trust that students are going to do amazing things," she said.

To get there, most districts in the network have found that teachers need professional development, although a consensus hasn't emerged on what that should look like.

In the nearly 14,000-student Roanoke County district, for example, the professional development has been job-embedded.

While student-led assessment is not mandatory for teachers, they are encouraged to visit the classes where it is happening, said Rhonda Stegall, the director of secondary instruction for the Roanoke County district.

Hidden Valley High's work in the student-led assessment area is the most advanced in the district. Hidden Valley Middle School had its first exhibition of student-driven projects this year, and other schools in the district are interested in participating in the future.

Consultants have also worked with interested teachers to guide them through the process of letting students take more control of their learning, Stegall said. At Hidden Valley High, the transition has been slow but steady.

Four years ago, only eight teachers were interested in trying student-led assessments. Now, three-quarters of the 70 teachers in the school, from all subject areas, take part, said Stegall, who had previously been the principal of Hidden Valley High when they started the program.

"[Teachers have] spent the last 10 or 12 years learning how to teach to the test, so it's hard to break away from that mindset," she said. "Ultimately, this is really good instruction, and they see that this taps into students' enthusiasm and engagement."

Research shows that when students have a greater sense of agency, they perform better, said Eric Toshalis, the research director of Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit that runs the Student-Centered Learning Research Collaborative, an effort aimed at investigating and sharing knowledge about student-centered learning approaches.

"Learners' attention and engagement tends to be optimized whenever they are put in a position to own the information, to be driving the questions that are asked, and to have a role in deciding how they'll be assessed," he said.

"The locus of control in that particular learning activity moves from the instructor to the student. Like all of us, [when] the student has the experience of feeling like they are in control of ... and proficient at something; they understand in greater depth."

At Hidden Valley High, state test scores stayed the same after the school began implementing student-led assessments-they didn't increase, but they also didn't drop. Teachers had been concerned about the scores dropping, Stegall said, but once they saw the results and realized students were excited about learning, they were sold.

"The morale was really low when we were focusing on the test and the disaggregation of data-that's the only thing we were talking about," Stegall said. "Before, the [tests] had control over [their profession]. Now, they're starting to take back some of that control. The morale has gone up; the enthusiasm, the passion for teaching is back."

During the exhibition night, teachers in Roanoke remarked on how much more engaged students were with these projects, which made their job more fun, they said.

"I love the inquiry-based and project-based learning," said Beverly Newbern, a history and psychology teacher at Hidden Valley High. "You never see them light up otherwise. They're out of their chairs-the same chairs your great-great-grandparents have been sitting in since 1901."

'Assessment Is a Process'

Another challenge has been to differentiate student-led assessment from a science-fair-type project, Stegall said. Initially, she said, a lot of the projects were "fluff," while teachers learned how to incorporate meaty content and the state standards into students' projects.

Now, checks of understanding are built into the process, along with quizzes, tests, or written components. At Hidden Valley High, students often go through protocols, where teachers and fellow students ask probing questions and discuss concerns about the project to make sure it is academically rigorous. And at the end, students have to evaluate their own work. The teacher determines the final grade, based on student self-assessment, peer assessment, and other benchmarks. Stegall said some teachers ask their students to explain the grade they deserve and why, providing information to back up their assertion.

As King, who oversees the Virginia network, put it: "A test is an event, and assessment is a process. It's really embedded in that teaching and learning cycle."

And that process can be challenging for students, Stegall said. "Some of our top-level kids, they really struggle with projects. They're good at taking tests," she said. "Their strength is direct recall of information, writing it on a piece of paper."

During exhibition night, students pointed to real-world skills as their main takeaways from their projects.

The students who worked on the Rube Goldberg machine learned how to collaborate with different personalities, Bubba said, adding that he had to learn to delegate instead of handling everything himself.

"It wasn't like a physics lab. ... It was something that failed, and we had to fix," said senior Matthew Whitely, who also worked on that project. Groups of students built components of the machine separately, and when they put it all together, it didn't run smoothly-the first time, the second time, and all the way up until the day of the exhibition, when it finally worked.

"We had to deal with failure," Whitely said.

The Virginia network, which is more than halfway through its two-year, $202,500 grant, hopes to collect quantitative and qualitative evidence in the fall that this type of assessment is improving student outcomes.

Meanwhile, the Assessment for Learning Project plans to introduce a new grant program soon for its existing grantees. The goal of the second grant will be to fully integrate these assessment reforms into education systems' operations, said Lench, its director.

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What Happens When Students Design Their Own Assessments?

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An experimental network of Virginia schools is letting students devise projects to demonstrate what they've learned.

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The idea of feedback is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Almost everything we do leads to some form of feedback. Whether it is getting recognition at your job, getting rebuked for a mistake at home, or something as common as getting likes on your Facebook/Instagram posts, we are running in a constant feedback loop that dictates how we evolve.

In the sphere of education, feedback is a compelling tool used for shaping students' learning curve. But today, a fundamentally altered idea of feedback does not appeal to the learners' innate impulse to grow.

Advances in the education landscape worldwide have created a considerable buzz for the concept of feedforward as a viable alternative for feedback.

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What is feedforward?

Simply put, feedforward looks at the future. This concept is rooted in the idea of moving forward with the help of suggestions for constant improvement. It counters the concept of feedback by eliminating the need for a response afterthe completion of any task or a grade after the performance. Instead, it redefines the entire give-take relationship between the reviewer and the reviewed.

Marshall Goldsmith, a leadership coach, first developed the concept of feedforward for business leaders. Taking inspiration from the ideas enlisted in his books, Joe Hirsch condensed the ideas about past, present, and future in the book entitled The Feedback Fix. What's common between both authors' views is their emphatic emphasis on the idea of feedforward.

Hirsch defines feedforward as "a radical approach to sharing feedback that unleashes performance and potential of everyone around us".

How does feedforward work?

In a learning environment, feedforward stokes the motivation to become better. It is rooted in the notion of a positive future rather than looking at the negatives of the past. This concept empowers students to envision their growth and create a roadmap for the same.

To exemplify it with a classroom scenario, a teacher can give a week-long project work to the students. In a normal situation, the teacher would give feedback in the form of a score or a grade for all individuals.

Cut to the feedforward approach, the teacher will discuss the objectives of the project work and the expectations alongside holding regular discussions about every student's progress on the work. In the process, they will talk about the areas of improvement for every project while appreciating the good work, if any.

Why does feedforward work?

A, the students will not work on the project just for the sake of it. It is not uncommon for students to delay their assignments until the last minute and hurriedly put something together just to get the 'passing marks'.

The concept of feedforward endeavors to eliminate this counterproductive habit. Students will be motivated to put in the effort and learn from a project, even if it is only because they need to show their progress in class.

B, the students will not associate a project work with grades. The idea of writing an assignment or making a report has become so useless for most students that they often 'outsource' their work. In such a situation, there is absolutely no learning or growth.

When a teacher engages with the learners regularly to discuss their progress and outcomes, it indirectly prompts the students to take their work seriously. It instills the idea of working for learning something rather than working for getting a grade.

How to implement feedforward in the classroom?

Even with all the research that has and will go into improving the mechanism for feedback, the fact remains that it is retrospective. This signifies that feedback, in some ways, obstructs the recipient's learning opportunities.

In stark contrast, feedforward is piecemeal. It allows students to rectify any errors or enhance any weaknesses in the process itself. This idea is premised on the notion that feedback is not simply a grade or a comment that you receive; it is a dialogic process of constant exchange of ideas.

Discussed below are a few ways to put this concept into action and assess its effectiveness through visible results.

1. Personalized discussions about the future

One of the most significant components of feedforward is to deliberate about the future. Interactive learning is always productive. By holding regular discussions with their students, teachers can instill the idea of positive change in a better manner.

The focus of these discussions, whether generic or about a specific project, should be on the scope for improvement. Sit with every student and give them your attention to discover what they are lacking and how they can improve.

This exercise should always include at least two suggestions for positive change. This works best when evaluating student performance in an ongoing assignment or activity.

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2. Following the idea of plussing

Plussing is a brilliant activity to create a collaborative learning environment. Practiced among the elites of some of the biggest companies like Microsoft, this exercise is also relevant for schools and educational institutions. It allows a group of people to ideate and iterate without any judgmental feedback or language.

Instead of rejecting any idea upfront, participants have to think of improving the idea with something better.

As a potent tool to effect feedforward, plussing empowers teachers to create student-oriented assignments and assessments. It encourages a culture of constructive thinking. In a classroom, learners and teachers can sit together to bounce some ideas off each other.

3. Planning for self-improvement

Marshall Goldsmith wrote, "Feedforward assumes that people can make positive changes in the future, whereas feedback tends to reinforce stereotyping, self-fulfilling prophecies, and feelings of failure".

Teachers need to interpret this idea of feeding forward and shape their pedagogy accordingly. The student should be taught to focus on what can be done instead of what is in the past. Teachers can help build and encourage this outlook by emphasizing on self-improvement.

In their interactions with the students, they can persuade the learners to plan for the future. For instance, set their goals for this academic session or decide on a subject that they want to improve. Positive change in the future is a fundamental idea in the feedforward concept.

4. Encouraging students' interests to build potential

What most educators do not realize is that negative or unbiased feedback can potentially destroy an individual's interests. With feedforward, the emphasis is on building the students' interests and hobbies, transforming them into skills.

The best way to augment students' potential is to be aware of their areas of interest and encourage them to find ways to pursue these interests. If, for instance, a student likes football. Then the teacher can motivate her or him to get formal training, watch games, and become better at the sport.

Even if their interests are from outside the syllabus, teachers can encourage them to use the values they learn in the class.

Final Thoughts

Feedback is a thing of the past, both literally and figuratively. The need to amplify students' learning outcomes calls for the idea of feedforward. It not only motivates the learners to put in their best efforts but also changes their outlook towards life. In a way, feedforward is a constructive reinterpretation of feedback that eliminates certain inapt aspects in the latter.

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Turning Feedback into Valuable Feedforward

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Feedback is a thing of the past, both literally and figuratively. The need to amplify students' learning outcomes calls for the idea of feedforward aimed at future improvements through a constant exchange of ideas.

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On Feedback / Feedforward:

1. Students can use feedback and have the most success when feedback is:

relevant to their work

the right type; and

at the right time

2. concrete, specific, and based on observation (not judgement) -- base it on the rubric or standards that they're trying to attain

3. feedback is letting students know how they're doing; feedforward is letting students how they can meet the standards / criteria.