I created a collaborative formative assessment using Insert Learning. Insert Learning allows teachers to add discussion questions onto any webpage. Students can then respond directly to those question prompts, highlight any text on the webpage and add a comment, or add post-it notes.
You should be able to use this link below to view my assessment, but you have to use Chrome: https://insertlearning.com/v1/share/cgf990jf
After I made that first assessment, I decided that it would have been more interesting to use Insert Learning with a news article since students would be applying their learning to a more relevant authentic situation. I added just a few questions to the beginning of an article here: https://insertlearning.com/v1/share/ljpc7lpa
If you aren’t able to access them, below are a few screenshots.
If I were using Insert Learning, I would probably have students respond to the question prompts I created and then require them to respond to each other for a certain period of time. I would also ask each student to create an additional question for the class, either based off another response or something they found interesting in the text. You could either pick a few of these additional questions to discuss as a class at the end of the activity or require each person to respond to one of these additional questions.
This assessment promotes higher-order thinking because the questions are open-ended and complex. In order to complete the assessment, students have to think about how the ideas in the questions can be supported by both the text and prior learning. This thinking is revealed through students’ responses and the questions that they pose to one another. One of the advantages of using Insert Learning (rather than just having a discussion around a text) is that the teacher has a record of student responses. The teacher can use this record to see what concepts students understand or struggle with and point to specific responses as evidence. The open-ended nature of the questions should yield responses that give the teacher some insight into any incorrect thinking. The teacher can then plan future instruction to address any misconceptions observed in the assessment.
The way that students interpret the text and respond to the questions will depend on their prior knowledge and beliefs; the open-ended nature of this assessment provides space for these different perspectives. As students complete the assessment, they must consider how the responses of their peers compare to their own thinking (How is what they said different from what I said? To what extent do I agree/disagree?), and then construct a reply. This process of elaboration helps students construct an increasingly complex understanding of the content.
The hope is that more students will be responding correctly than incorrectly on this assessment, and the students that understand the content well will lead the majority of their peers to construct a correct understanding. However, the teacher view of Insert Learning has a live feed of all responses, and the teacher should definitely step-in if things are going the wrong direction. You don’t want the assessment to become a feeding ground for misconceptions.
Education and Technology 