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By Martine Rioux
Engaged Learning
@riomarti
One of the best ways to demonstrate students’ progress is to collect evidence of learning. This helps the teacher verify that objectives have been met and to obtain an overview of the skills and abilities developed over time. The more varied and voluminous the evidence, the more accurate this portrait will be.
Most educational policies in Canada have set out guidelines for teachers to collect this evidence. “The gathering of information during classroom activities is usually sufficient to allow the teacher to make the required observations. Significant records of a student’s learning are kept and observations recorded over time so that they are available when needed,” reads the Quebec’s Ministry of Education Policy on the Evaluation of Learning.
In Ontario, a similar document called Growing Success, states that collecting evidence is a necessary tool for teaching practice: “Transparency is achieved when student learning is assessed and evaluated according to the clear standards outlined in the curriculum expectations.” It is further written that “as essential steps in assessment for learning and as learning, teachers need to analyze and interpret evidence of learning.”
Therefore, this should not be used only to fill the students’ portfolios. The evidence becomes an element to be considered when determining the final grade in a given discipline. In contrast, the evaluation of learning should be based on teachers’ professional judgment, one that is gathered from a variety of information. Evidence complements traditional examinations, and can even replace them entirely. Let’s never forget that a result on a single exam is not always an accurate portrait of the student’s performance. In fact, the purpose of the examination should be to validate what has already been observed and marked based on what the student achieved compared to their learning objectives.
Moreover, in order for the evidence to be properly interpreted to establish an accurate portrait of each student, it should contain different types of evidence. This is called triangulation of evidence of learning.
This means that “the teacher collects evidence of student achievement from three different sources: oral expression (including conversations), observation of attitudes and behaviours, and productions (written or otherwise).” This way, they ensure that they have collected a sufficient and diversified quantity of evidence.
What is Evidence of Learning?
Evidence, or proof of learning, is the demonstration of what the student knows, can do and/or can express.
To learn more about triangulation and discover examples of evidence of learning, see our article Triangulate Evidence of Learning and Evaluation.
According to Anne Davies (2011), “everything students do, say and create, in the classroom and during their learning, is potential evidence of learning.” These pieces of evidence of learning include products, observations, and conversations (the three elements that make up triangulation).
Moreover, digital tools are gradually used to facilitate this triangulation. By making it possible to create a greater variety of evidence (written, audio, visual, etc.), they provide more options for teachers and students (see the central pages on this subject).
Getting the most complete portrait of each student’s skills makes it possible to understand the manner in which they learn in different contexts. Collecting evidence in only one of the three elements (only written productions, for example) does not make it possible to obtain an accurate portrait of the level of achievement of the skills and knowledge required by the teaching curriculum.
As Davies also argues, “reliably assessing a student’s level cannot be based solely on the score from a multiple-choice test, quiz, or final exam. Several sources of assessment enable teachers to note whether the various pieces of evidence are converging.” This approach also allows for greater pedagogical differentiation.
Furthermore, it is relevant to remember that “the curriculum does not impose a specific form of evidence of learning.” For example, in the high school first-year geography class in Québec, the student must understand several phenomena, such as globalization or even urbanization. It does not mean that they must absolutely choose the correct definition from an array of answers, or even regurgitate the exact definitions on a piece of paper during an exam. On the contrary, they could explain it orally in their own words to a classmate or the teacher. By doing so, they would demonstrate just as reliably (perhaps even more!) that they understand that particular concept.
“By triangulating evidence of learning and documenting it, teachers can base their judgment and assessment on real evidence and not just on their memory, feelings and intuition,” Davies also argues in the article A case for a triangulation of evidence of student learning.
However, as in the integration of any other new practice, it requires investing some time to plan properly. Above all, it is not necessary to change everything overnight. Choices then have to be made. To begin, you can consider integrating triangulation for a specific skill or a learning sequence. It is never too late to add more to put it into practice in your annual planning.
The Centre franco-ontarien de ressources pédagogiques (Centre franco) offers some planning ideas for collecting evidence of learning through triangulation. Essentially, it is a matter of proceeding by planning backwards, therefore starting from the objective to be achieved.
During this stage of planning, three elements must be kept in mind.
Once the planning has been completed, the Centre franco recommends implementation steps that will engage students in the process. This then requires being transparent with them.
Also, according to Davies, collecting evidence of learning “requires being transparent about what is to be learned, about the expectations in terms of the level of quality, and about the potential of evidence of learning.”
There can be many types of evidence of learning. One of the challenges is to successfully collect and organize it in a simple and structured way so that you can refer to it as needed. “The evidence must exist and be tangible to be considered; the teachers’ professional judgment must be based on multiple and enduring pieces of evidence,” also writes Davies. Therefore, you must be able to collect the evidence regularly and in the same place, preferably in the form of a digital portfolio (see our article Implementing Digital Portfolios in Preschool and Elementary School). At this stage, students can help set up a system for collecting evidence.
Once the system is defined, they will be able to organize some of their evidence of learning.
With good organization, it becomes easier for the teacher to retrieve pieces of evidence, provide structured feedback to the students, and record their own evidence in the form of evaluation grids, observation sheets or rating scales.
There are a variety of online platforms that can be used to manage evidence of learning. Microsoft has a shared notebook application called OneNote, which can be used alone or integrated into a Teams group. Some Google tools also have attractive possibilities,
among others.
Karyne Lachance (@KaryneLachance), a pedagogical consultant with the Service régional du RÉCIT FGA-FP pour la Montérégie, and Dominique Pissard (@erinos2), a pedagogical consultant in arts, cultural and intercultural development with the Centre de services scolaires Marie-Victorin, have developed training designed to help teaching staff learn how to use OneNote for the purpose of using it in Class Notebook with students (as of third grade).
According to them, this cross-platform tool is very versatile and meets many needs. It makes it possible to centralize all the evidence from both students and teachers, while providing interesting possibilities for educational differentiation and accessibility.
Therefore, a page or a section of OneNote may contain the student’s productions, whether written, audio or video. It is even possible to record audio comments or take photos directly from the notebook page, which can be used for artistic creation or to explain a process.
Feedback from the teacher, which can be done in real time, in writing, orally or with video, and additional information, such as another document or an explanatory video, may also be integrated.
For their part, the teacher can create pages in their notebook to record their observations on each student, which will facilitate their task when rendering judgment on their group’s learning.
The various tools provided by Google also offer many possibilities for collecting evidence of learning by triangulation and for supporting teachers to better organize and evaluate this evidence. In this case, a combination of several tools becomes a winning formula. They are accessible from Google Classroom, Google Drive or individually.
For example, we will use:
For the teacher seeking to acquire their own tool to record evidence, Marie-Andrée Ouimet (@maouimet), tech integration coach, and Laurie Couture (@lauriecouture92), pedagogical consultant at EngagED Learning, recommend using Forms.
It is then a matter of creating forms with fields corresponding to the elements to be validated. These forms become anecdotal sheets, rating scales, observation grids or checklists for the teacher. In a learning context, they can simply fill out the form as they observe steps taken towards achieving the objective. Form responses are saved in a spreadsheet. The teacher can then consult them, sort them and even share them with colleagues or parents (either through a complete file or a line corresponding to a student). Choose the ” Read-only ” sharing mode to prevent having documents accidentally deleted!
It is also possible to create the same type of form and summary table of responses with the Numbers application, installed by default on the iPad, as well as with the Microsoft Forms tool.
When creating the form:
When using the form:
For those who are more advanced
Once the students have produced evidence, the teacher must be able to collect and examine it in order to determine whether the expected results have been achieved. Many teachers have developed their own systems, grids, or sheets for this purpose, in accordance with previously-established evaluation criteria. Some are featured in this issue of the magazine.
There is no perfect model, and everyone will adjust their method to become more efficient and skilful over time. This kind of tool is usually built through trial and error. It frequently takes the form of spreadsheets or various tables, evolves as evidence is collected, and generally allows elements of feedback to be shared with students (and sometimes even with parents), always with a transparency purpose.
In addition, continuously throughout a learning sequence, feedback is facilitated. Thanks to the recorded observations, the teacher can clearly explain to the students what still has to be learned in relation to the final expectations and guide them in their progress according to the various possible evidence of learning to be produced. Here again, several digital tools become interesting feedback tools, such as Flip, Talk&Comment and the native features of the various platforms.
Triangulation then “allows teachers to say that everything a student does, says or creates is potential evidence of their learning,” and this, in different aspects (products, observations, conversations) (Davies, 2011). In this sense, triangulation becomes more of a demonstration of skill development, not knowledge retention.
In Québec, in accordance with the second orientation of the Policy on the Evaluation of Learning – Evaluation of learning must be based on the teacher’s professional judgment – and with section 19 of the Education Act, the teacher “is entitled to select the means of evaluating” to examine and assess continually and periodically the progress and achievement of objectives of every student.
This way of working necessarily requires taking a step back from traditional evaluation. Since the teacher’s findings do not represent a grade on an exam, how can they be transformed into grades? As when recording traces, the majority of teachers will develop their own way of operating, allowing them to exercise their professional judgment.
Evaluation is and will remain a delicate subject. Findings on the methods and their effectiveness are constantly changing. The emotional aspect related to evaluation easily comes into play, both for the teachers and the students and their parents. The goal is not necessarily to change everything or simply to continue doing what we have always done. Rather, it is a matter of questioning and adapting one’s practices so that what each student brings home and carries in their school bag is coherent and faithful to their real skills, and this, in a multitude of fields.
Other articles in this issue
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