“Creating Ownership in Assessment—From Higher Education to K-12 Classrooms” was the title of the recorded session presented at the CAST UDL Symposium by Deanna Maynard (University of Wisconsin – La Crosse) and Ashley Zehner (Muskingum University). Their guiding question they stated was: “how can we support pre-service teachers to reduce barriers when designing assessments? Zehner asked: how can we promote ownership, ensure equity, and make sure learners can show their best. Maynard emphasized assessment in K-12 and higher education classrooms. The course objectives they included focus on assessment as well as UDL and using high-impact/leverage practices. Students in Maynard and Zehner’s courses have 13-15 years of personal experience with assessment… and they explained that their students spoke about standardized testing and spelling tests. Maynard also shared observations of field classrooms in relation to practices and assessments. The presenters shared examples of assessments and lessons their students created: GoogleDocs for peer reviews, puppets… rubrics. They cited an article entitled: High-leverage Practices for Students with Disabilities” that could be used in a variety of inclusive environments. They summarized their presentation with a couple of takeaways: the importance of thinking how to develop clear objectives. The presenters spoke about keeping information findable and connecting the research to assessment. One of the points they shared and want to model is flexibility in assessment, transparency in the purpose of assessment with pre-service teachers, and encouraging self-reflection. Zehner has students do pre and mid self-reflections by sharing the objectives and asking. The perspective of educators training future educators on assessment is quite cool! I wonder what in their lessons can be used to model transparency and share with students…
