How do you measure growth?

Since our F2F session at Mars a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about how my action plan can be refined and refocused.  I had many opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations that helped me to revise and redirect my efforts.  Two of these conversations stand out as they helped to foster meaningful connections with the new direction of my action plan.

During our morning coffee break, I had an energizing conversation with Ed Hitchcock who shared his work and insights on Standards Based Grading.  We spoke about his ongoing efforts to find meaningful measures for feedback and how standards based grading is helping him to provide accurate and purposeful data of student learning over time.  Watching Ed’s amazing SBG video helped me to get a full sense of the scope of his project – and passion – in assessment.  Thanks to Ed, I have been prompted to specifically consider how standards based grading can play a role in my action plan around effective use of e-portfolios as a tool to measure learning over time.  I recognize that this application will extend beyond the scope of my action plan (…at least in the year 1 model).   This conversation and my subsequent learning has helped to define a key part of the purpose behind my action plan on e-portfolios as a tool to measure growth and progress over time.

Around the afternoon schedule of sessions, I had a meaningful conversations with Leslie McBeth.  Her action plan is focused on creating a PLN using online tools.  Leslie’s energy and enthusiasm for expanding her personal learning network as a resource to promote professional conversation as part of a larger teaching team is an inspiration.  In speaking with Leslie, I was prompted to consider how the different tools and resources of a PLN can support the teachers who are working with e-portfolios as part of the pilot project at Trafalgar this year.  How can I use  face-to-face and virtual support to encourage my colleagues as we engage in this exercise to measure learning over time?

These conversations – and lots of reading of Cohort21 Blogs – have helped me to reframe my action plan, beginning with a clarification of the goals for this project. My action plan will examine how digital portfolios can be used to measure learning over time.  Given that our e-portfolio pilot at Trafalgar is centred around specific learning skills in the middle school, I will examine how these skills – as standards of growth – can be measured over time.   In order to measure this progress, we have asked students to gather artefacts of their learning in subject areas, and connect them with one or more learning skills.  A reflection —  in any form that the student chooses, from written to audio or visual form — is included with each artefact.  One key goal of this pilot is to gather data on how these steps encourage students to focus on process as well as skills involved in their learning experience.

There will be many new questions that arise as this pilot progresses, from both the student and teacher perspective.  I look forward to hearing from the girls as they share their learning and feedback on e-portfolios as a tool to measure progress in their learning skills.  I also look forward to hearing your thoughts around the role of PLN’s and SBG as tools that contribute to the success of e-portfolios as a teaching and learning model.