Tracking Student Achievement
Assessment policies and “best practices” are a big deal in education. It seems to me that every year the discussion around assessment, evaluation, and reporting becomes richer and more multi-layered.
To a new teacher (or a very traditional one), the policies around assessment, evaluation, and reporting, can be overwhelming and complex. Because assessment policies and best practices can seem daunting at first, I think that some teachers have a tendency to lean too heavily on mark reporting software to “crunch” a student’s overall mark. Obviously, the simplest – and most ineffective – way to track a student’s achievement is to evaluate everything the student hands in and put the marks into some tracking software, which then averages all of the assignments together and spits out an overall grade. I don’t even want to begin to list off all that is wrong with this approach.
Now, I’m not bashing mark tracking software. In fact, I use a program myself, and I think that it is a really important component of my overall assessment of a student’s achievement in my courses. However, I am very cautious with how I use the software, and I never let a program tell me what a student’s mark should be. Calculating the overall average of a few major tasks is only one piece of information I use to generate a student’s overall grade – after all, the tracking software has never once had a conversation with my students, or observed them while they worked!
Over the last few years, I have been on a quest to find a mark tracking program that I like and that aligns with the assessment policies set by the Ontario government.
As with many teachers in Ontario, I first started tracking marks using Markbook. It is a powerful program for doing detailed calculations and “number-crunching,” but I really feel that Markbook has some very big limitations in our current climate of assessment and evaluation. Within a few years of using Markbook, I felt it was very stifling to me when trying to exercise my professional judgement.
I have experimented with a large number of online mark tracking programs, like MyGradeBook, Engrade, and Thinkwave. In general, I have been disappointed with their customizability and functionality, as they are only designed to be used in one specific way. Maybe it’s the techie in me, but I want a program that I can tweak to work just how I like it.
A few years ago, I switched to Easy Grade Pro. It is a robust program that gives me a lot of control over how marks are entered, processed and output. The main advantage of this program is that students can access their marks from the web using a secure login and password. I also feel that the interface and reports generated by Easy Grade Pro allow me to better “eye ball” a student’s overall level of achievement on submitted work. Of course, it still has some issues, but it has served me well for the past 2 years and I do recommend it.
Today, I learned about a new mark tracking program that I think has a lot of potential. It’s called Markscan and has been specifically designed for standards-based assessment in Ontario. The key difference between Markscan and other software applications is that the program does not generate a student’s mark at all – it only creates an assessment graph to facilitate the teacher’s professional judgement. The program is actually designed only for “eyeballing!” As you can see in the image below, the program is not at all flashy, but I was impressed by the concept. If you’re also intrigued, check out the 5-minute Busy Teacher Demonstration from the Markscan website. I have only just begun to start playing with the program, but I think that I am going to try it out this semester alongside my regular mark tracking software. I will let you know in June if I’m going to dump Easy Grade Pro and start recommending Markscan instead. Stay tuned …
Image Credit: Dave Dugdale (http://www.rentvine.com/)
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