Student Improvement in the Standard Through Technology

So how do you know that you students are progressing in their standards-based learning within this unit?

If you gave your students a forced choice (TF, multiple choice, matching, etc.) pre-test, you can give them a post test. Blackboard and other online services (Zoomerang, ProProfs) allow you to test students and instantly see the results.

However, you probably do not want to wait until the post-test to see how well they are doing so you can give them short quizzes on specific aspects of their standards-based learning. You will test at the highest level of thinking. Again, online test programs give the students and you the results instantly (or when you release the grades). You may decide that these are practice tests that do not count for a grade but do count for allowing students to see their progress and understanding their learning gaps.

Students can graph their own progress on peer- or self-assessed checklists or  rubrics. Students can see the dramatic difference between a starting rubric (or checklist) score of 15, a midpoint one of 22, a third one of 25, and a fourth one of 27 out of 30.

If you have students produce work like a concept map, then you will want to have a student’s “at the start of the unit” concept map,, “in the middle of the unit”,  and at “at the end of the unit” concept map on the same topic. You can see new categories, and critical links.  They can see their maps growing with their new knowledge. When students do these maps digitally, they can save the original. Then they add more as they go through the unit. They can print out the easy-to-read concept maps.