[MUSIC] Welcome to our third session on involving students in assessment. Today we're going to look at good self-assessment practices. I think you're going to find that there's a strong overlap between how we recommend students self-assess and how they peer-assess. Remember we're now looking-- still looking in the whole area of informal interactive student-centered assessment practices and formats. The basic approach to self-assessment that we recommend starts with involving students in developing or understanding and discussing criteria for judging the quality of work. If you give students a detailed model answer with commentary, explaining why this is good work or how it makes to be good work then that gives them a reference point when they're looking at their own work and comparing apples with hopefully apples. In addition, a marking sheet can be given to students where they can say, "Well, here's how mine is the same as the model answer, and how mine is different to the model answer." And identifying those differences and similarities and then saying, "On this basis, I would grade my own as being higher, equal to or slightly lower, or even a lot lower than the one that you've given me as a model." And it's important that teachers still moderate those self-assessments. Some students are just notorious for giving themselves high marks. Others are notorious for giving themselves harsh and low marks, and they might not be merited. And the teacher's job is to help guide the student to a realistic understanding of the quality of their own work. On screen now is a sample of a student piece of work, that we captured in a New Zealand primary school. And in blue, you can see the student's work and some ticks the student has given himself, and at the end the student has generated a comment, "I think I did well and I got two around the wrong way and I only just finished and I talked a lot on the second session and it was fun." The teacher signed this. But really was "fun" an important criteria for judging the quality of work? If that had been discussed in advance, perhaps that's a valid comment. But if not we really need to consider how this teacher has evaluated and responded to this perhaps inappropriate criteria. Now, I know teachers have very busy lives and a lot of marking and a lot of work, but still it's up to us to interact with students, not just in terms of the quality of their work, but in the quality of their self evaluations. Another approach that's being used quite extensively in assessment for learning where students are involved is for students to show one of three traffic lights. Red means "I need another lesson or I didn't understand". Orange means "I kind of understand it but I'm not really sure". Green means "I understand, I'm ready to go onto the next thing". And in New Zealand, as well as other countries in the world, teachers are using these in classrooms saying "Okay, now self-assess your understanding, and show me the color of the light that you think reflects your status, your understanding." Now, this takes place in front of other students, let's not forget. It's a classroom activity. And we've studied students in classrooms and we've asked them, "What do you think about these traffic lights?" and one girl said to us, "Well, sometimes if you put up a red you feel like the teacher might tell us off or something", "She'll tell us to listen more or something like we weren't listening", "She turns it against us if we're not learning". So, if the students have a fearful relationship towards the teacher then they're more likely to be dishonest in their reporting about their understanding. And sometimes if the relationships between students is not healthy and strong they might lie to the teacher about their understanding. For example, Sally said "Yesterday, we were learning to simplify fractions and I couldn't actually understand what she was saying so I don't actually know how to simplify fractions." So, my colleague asked her, "Did you put up red in your traffic light?" "No, I did orange. Jason was looking at my work and if I did red he'd think I was dumb, so I just did orange." Remember, showing your self-assessment in public could be risky psychologically and emotionally. If there isn't a strong healthy relationship between classmates and with the teacher, this kind of self-assessment is probably a bad idea. So, what do we need to do? We need to make sure that students understand what the valid criteria are. We need to ensure that they know how to judge work, that they can recognise what an excellent or an average or a weak piece of work looks like. We need to ensure that students get feedback that helps them be realistic and that might be your job as the teacher. We need to help them understand when they get graded work whether it's a test score or work on an assignment or a project that you've marked how to use that information to improve their own learning. We have to be sure there's safety, psychological safety. And a really important technique if students are asked to evaluate their own work, get them to explain why. Perhaps though, self-assessment shouldn't be used as an assessment at all, maybe it's just a really effective learning tool. Our recommendation if you're going to start with younger students or academically weaker students, or if you're introducing self-assessment for the first time, start with simple and concrete techniques like before they do a quiz or a test, ask them to estimate for themselves - how many do you think you'll get right? And then they have a reference point to compare against. Clearly the closer in time their self-assessment is to the teaching moment, it's more accurate and realistic they're more likely to be when they self asses. And if you ask them, how well do you think you've done compared to the last time we did this? They're more likely to give you a realistic answer. It's one of the advantages of an athlete - always referring back to their last performance or their personal best. I would suggest that we shouldn't introduce complex self-assessment, like with rubrics and criteria, until they can demonstrate that they have a reasonably accurate sense of how good their work is. And I think our job as teachers is to encourage honesty in their self-assessment. That might mean that sometimes we don't even ask to see their self-assessment, we let them keep it perfectly private. We don't force them to display their self-assessments to their classmates, especially if they're ashamed of poor quality work, but we do encourage them to share their self-evaluation with somebody they trust. It might be their family member or a best friend in another class, or their cousin or some other family member. But they need to talk about their work, even if it's not to you the teacher. Remember the goal here is to help them improve their ability to see the strengths and weaknesses of their own work so that they can improve, and your job as the teacher is to help them develop the ability to see those strengths, to see the weaknesses, not to be deluded by how hard they worked, or how pretty it looks but what are the real strengths here. Perhaps if the work is not very good the student should be rewarded for realising "My work isn't very good and I need to work on it." and, "Teacher can you help me improve?" In our last session coming up, we're going to talk more about what our research into teacher and student interaction around peer and self-assessment tells us, and we'll finish the course with that outlook on how students themselves see peer and self-assessment. [MUSIC]
