Assessment to inform instruction and promote learning
Assessment for learning turns day-to-day assessment into a teaching and learning process that enhances, instead of merely monitoring, student learning. Assessment becomes far more relevant than a one-time test stuck onto the end of an instructional unit. Rather, it becomes a series of interlaced experiences that benefit the learning process by keeping students confident and focused on their progress.
“Through student involvement in classroom assessment, we can focus students on a clear path to ultimate success. If we engage students in continuous self-assessment over time, we can keep them believing that success is within reach if they keep striving. And if we provide them with the opportunity to use this evidence to tell the story of their success, we can tap a wellspring of confidence and motivation to learn that resides naturally within each student.” – Dr. Rick Stiggins
TechSteps utilizes a performance-based evaluation system and provides all the resources necessary to implement, manage, and assess both technology and 21st Century skills development. Assessment is used to inform instruction and to generate timely, actionable feedback that promotes learning.
Dynamic performance rubrics associated with each activity provide assessment as learning opportunities and allow educators to identify academic and 21st Century competencies demonstrated with in each authentic artifact. Once entered into the TechSteps database, an ongoing technology literacy profile (for K-8) and fluency profile (for 9-12) for 21st Century skills is automatically generated for every student. These cumulative attainment profiles provide a truly valid representation of demonstrated proficiencies from assessments over multiple projects and classes.
Each summative profile provides an accurate measure of whether the student is able to apply knowledge and skills in ways that demonstrate that they are able to seamlessly use technology to communicate, collaborate, analyze, create, innovate, and solve problems in meaningful contexts.
