Ask the Expert: Approaching UDL Assessment

So today we have a question from Rob. I'm struggling with UDL assessments. What are the key things I should be doing when assessing from a UDL perspective? Well Rob, this is quite a challenging question to answer quickly. So I will try to distill my answer into several important considerations that you might want to make when assessing from a UDL perspective. The first thing and this is going to sound obvious is to make sure that your assessments directly align with the goals or outcomes of the learning that you are providing to your learners. Making sure that learning goals and learning outcomes align directly with assessments is really really important because obviously we must be assessing whatever it is that we want the students to know or be able to do. The knowledge skills and abilities that we are hoping they will develop as a result of their learning. We must be able to assess in the most direct and clear fashion possible. Obviously in order to do that we need very clear learning outcomes and we need learning outcomes that are written well in smart fashion generally speaking. And it's really important that we do this because obviously if we are providing clear learning outcomes and a clear means of assessing those learning outcomes we can then provide really clear learning activities that support the development of the skills that are going to be assessed as part of those learning outcomes. And this is really the essence of constructive alignment. The other reason it's really important to have really clear learning outcomes or learning goals is because the learning outcomes and learning goals give rise to the assessment construct. Now the assessment construct is the part of the assessment that the assessment intends to measure. So it's the knowledge skills and abilities that the assessment intends to measure in our learners. In which case it must be really really clear. So without good, clearly written learning outcomes we're not going to get a good, clear assessment construct. And really the assessment construct so the thing that the assessment intends to measure is probably the most important consideration when designing assessments in the broadest sense. Not just even thinking about you, yeah, I'll just, you know, if we want to create a good assessment we must make sure that that assessment is a clear measure of whatever it is we intend to assess. This brings me on to the next aspect really of designing effective UDL assessments. And that's ensuring that we minimize irrelevant constructs or at least reduce their impact or minimize the impact of those irrelevant constructs on our learners demonstrating their learning. So an irrelevant construct is anything that an assessment measures, but it's not the intention of that assessment to measure it. So take the example of a biology exam. Let's say the purpose of a biology exam is to assess biology knowledge. But if the exam is unseen and closed book requires a hand written answer over a time period of two hours. Not only is it assessing biology knowledge, it's also assessing handwriting, time management, short term long term and working memory. The ability to communicate ideas in writing is effectively assessing lots of things that were never intended to be assessed in the first place. And that's what we mean by irrelevant constructs. And those irrelevant constructs for many learners can indeed prove to be barriers. So if you are a dyslexic learner, for example, hand writing your answer to an exam question can be quite challenging, which is one of the reasons why we provide dyslexic learners, for example, with extra time in exams. My view is that we should provide everybody with extra time because actually being forced to provide an answer over a fixed time period when it's perhaps not needed in this context provides another barrier. So make sure you look at your assessments and try to identify the irrelevant constructs where possible. The third key piece of advice I would give is probably to work out whether it's primarily skills that you're assessing or knowledge that you're assessing. So if it's skills, the example I like to use, let's say we're baking a cake. The assessment for a cake baking course would have to be to bake a cake. You can't write an essay about baking a cake and you can't give a presentation or create a poster you would have to bake the cake. So there's no flexibility in terms of the assessment output. And that's absolutely fine because skills are skills and they need to be mastered within a given context. It would be the same if we were doing a public speaking course. The assessment would have to be a public speaking task again. We couldn't write an essay about public speaking. We would have to actually do some public speaking. The way that we can make a skills based assessment more flexible and more UDL friendly as it were, are to give learners choice in relation to the content that is associated with that skill. So if it's public speaking and they have to do a public speaking task, can they do a public speaking task on any topic that they like? If it's a cake that they're going to bake, can they bake any kind of cake that they like? It's their choice. The element of choice over content provides obviously an element of personalisation and that's important from an engagement perspective. If you're being made to bake a cake or give a public speech and you're being made to give that speech or bake that cake on a specific topic that you don't have any say over, then that I think would serve to affect your motivation and maybe cause a little bit of dismay. So where we can offer choices, offer choices and certainly we can do in relation to the content. One of the other things it's important to remember if it's a skills based assessment as well is how we can support learners to develop multiple pathways to complete that particular assessment. So let's take essay writing. Let's say the assessment has to be an essay because you are assessing learner skill in creating and writing essays. There is more than one way to plan and write an essay. We would try and support learners by providing them with multiple options in relation to how to plan and write essays. Whether that's getting their ideas down on paper, whether that's providing some sort of template or blueprint for them to follow in relation to creating a good essay, we should provide options in relation to how they can go about completing that task because there is more than one way to complete it. There's not just one way to write an essay as there isn't just one way to complete a public speaking task for example. So if it's skills based, provide multiple options in relation to how they can complete the assessment, so how they can achieve the goal, the pathway if you like, but provide options as well in relation to content. If it's knowledge based, then there is far more potential flexibility in the actual assessment output. So if we were just going to assess biology knowledge, we could do that in an exam as I mentioned previously, but we could do that as opposed to we could do that as a presentation, we could do that as a viable, we could do that as a Q&A. We're not wedded to any one particular output. So if it's skills, it will tend to be quite fixed in terms of the output, but you can offer variety in terms of content and how to produce that particular output. And if it's knowledge, you can obviously provide far more flexibility, but just a word on that flexibility in terms of the output. You should still always look to use an occupationally relevant output. So an output that is real to that particular subject discipline. So if you're going to give some sort of scientific communication, there are various ways in which you can provide a scientific communication from a TED talk to an actual research paper to a poster, etc. You probably wouldn't provide a cartoon storyboard or something like that. That just wouldn't be realistic. So there is an element of occupational relevance as well that needs to be addressed whenever you're assessing. We might call that authenticity and assessment, actually, but it's an important consideration. So again, if it's skills-based, we don't always have to worry too much about authenticity if we're doing a public speaking course. A public speaking task is very authentic. However, if it's more knowledge-based and we have options around flexibility in terms of the assessment output, it's really important that the output is still as authentic as possible. The next thing I would probably consider in relation to creating assessments from a UDL perspective is, in your assessment processes, is it possible to provide assessment for and assessment as learning? So assessment for learning is essentially formative assessment. Don't really need to explain what that is, but the real importance of formative assessment is in this piece around supporting learners to become expert learners. So obviously one of the main goals or the main goal of UDL is to support learners to become expert learners. Expert learning is about, obviously, mastering learning content by being able to apply a range of practical and cognitive skills to that content. But the other element of expert learning is about knowing how to achieve that mastery in your own personal way. So this is about learning to learn. There's a real metacognitive aspect to this. So to support that learner metacognition, to support them in learning to learn and finding the pathways that help them in the most effective way, way it's important that we formatively assess them and provide feedback to them. Whenever we're providing feedback as part of any learning endeavor, whether it's formative or summative assessment, it's really important to provide what Jeff Petty calls "medals and missions". So a medal is information on what the learner has done well in a given context, but critically it's information on why they did it well, because they might not always know why they did something well within a given context. If they know why they did something well, they're more likely to do it again in the future. So this is around, you know, developing those long-term learning habits and strategies that make us more effective learners, make us expert learners. We also award a mission, so a mission is something that the learner needs to improve upon, but again we don't just tell them what they need to improve, we tell them critically how to improve, because again if we give them some information about how to improve, they're more likely to take those steps and repeat them in future. And again, they're developing those long-term learning habits and strategies to make them a more effective learner, to make them an expert learner effectively. So include assessment full learning in any of your assessment processes. This can be linked to your instructional design as well, you know, this can be part of how you deliver your learning and teaching, not necessarily just your summative assessment. Assessment as learning is pretty much about self-assessment. So where possible can you get the learners assessing themselves? An inability to self-assess means that your potential for development and becoming a more effective learner is equally limited. You know, if you can't self-assess, you can't really improve. So where possible in the assessment process can learners assess themselves and provide feedback to themselves through reflection. This is all part of that piece around developing those long-term learning habits and strategies that support learning expertise or the development of learning expertise. So they would be the key things I would think about as a sort of starter. Make sure your assessments directly align to the learning goals. Make sure the learning goals are clear and provide a clear learning assessment construct. Make sure that you are eliminating or reducing the impact of any irrelevant constructs where possible. Make sure that you know whether you're assessing skills or knowledge and then obviously respond appropriately and accordingly. And then try to include assessment as learning and assessment for learning in your assessment processes because they're really, really good ways to develop that learning expertise from a meta-cognitive point of view. You're going to help learners to recognise what works for them and what perhaps doesn't work for them. Thanks ever so much for listening.