Preparing your class for online assessments
We all want assessments to reflect children’s true abilities in the skills and knowledge being assessed. To achieve this with a new type of assessment, such as online assessment, it is important that children are comfortable with the tools that they will use. Just as children can be taught techniques for taking paper-based assessments, there are similar tips and routines that can help on-screen. This blog will run through some practical tips and things to think about to help you and your class to get the most out of online assessments.
Digital natives
Modern children have grown up with technology all around them. It is assumed that children are fluent with all devices; this is often true when it comes to touchscreens. However, using keyboards, touchpads and mice can prove to be more difficult. Typing and clicking require fine motor skills that are not fully developed in younger children. Underdeveloped fine motor skills alongside a lack of familiarity with keyboards can slow children down and lead to frustration. However, this can be overcome by giving children ample time to practise using the devices that they will use for their assessment. This could be achieved by:
- Providing opportunities for children to publish their writing on computers;
- Setting touch-typing websites as homework;
- Playing letter finding games on old or laminated keyboards
- Fine motor skills interventions and games such as lacing activities, hand clapping rhymes or even Rubik’s cubes!
Familiarisation and practice questions
Many online assessment platforms provide materials to help to familiarise children to their assessments. For instance, there may be videos that explain how to navigate through the e-assessments and answer the different question types. There may also be simple practice questions. Often, these questions are deliberately easy, designed to help ease children into the assessment and to help them to become comfortable with the question types they will see in the test. How these questions are administered to the class is up to the teacher and their knowledge of their class. They could be used as a teaching tool, to be discussed and completed as a whole class, or in small groups if needed.
Using pencil and paper
When faced with a question on-screen, there is a natural tendency to think that the answer must be worked out mentally. However, children should be encouraged to reach for pencil and paper whenever necessary. This can be true particularly for maths questions which involve written methods, or curriculum areas where diagramming or annotation would be useful (e.g., coordinates, geometry or problems where tools such as bar models would be helpful). Online assessments present a context in which to explore and teach children how to choose the most appropriate method – mental or written; diagramming or mental visualisation. Different children will require different tools but the sorts of things they might find helpful to jot down include:
- Written or pictorial methods
- Times tables or step counting (for example to support long division)
- Notes of the answer to mental calculations done within multi step problems
- Drawing or copying of diagrams or shapes
- Bar models or number lines
Checking work
Just as teachers would encourage their students to check their work in a paper assessment, the same should apply in a online context. On paper, written errors are often the result of rushing or misconceptions but generally reflect a student’s intended answer. However, on screen, there is the potential for a student to intend an answer but to mistype or hit an adjacent key. It is therefore even more important for children to become accustomed to checking that their answers are what they intended to type. If children can begin to recognise this, it may present an opportunity to train them in self-checking techniques in all contexts, both on screen and on paper.
Some assessments may also give students the opportunity, at the end of the assessment, to go back and check their work. It may highlight questions that they have left unanswered, thus prompting and scaffolding the self-checking process and encouraging independent learning skills. It is likely, however, that children will still require some training and explanation of how to use such tools.
As with most things in the classroom, a little investment of time in teaching these specific skills and routines can reap the rewards of smoother, and more accurate assessments as well as the ultimate goal of more independent learners.
To find out more about NFER’s range of paper assessments and our new NFER Online Assessments, visit our NFER Tests page.