Assessments for Personalized Learning

Personalizing learning, for every student in the classroom, can make teaching more effective, fun, and gratifying.

At its heart, personalized learning is the practice of adapting the type and pace of instruction to each student in the classroom. That’s a lofty goal, especially considering the diversity of today’s students, both in cultural backgrounds and learning styles.

Personalized learning can be easier to incorporate than you might think, though, and it’s easy to implement when you use assessments.

What Are Assessments In Personalized Learning

In their simplest form, assessments are feedback loops. Assessments show you whether individual students – and the classroom as a whole – are grasping the concepts, topics, and subjects that you’re teaching.

Summative Assessments In Personalized Learning

Summative assessments, (which is usually just a fancy name for a test), are given at the end of a block of teaching. Summative assessments can provide valuable feedback and data, but they’re often administered too late to allow enough time for corrections in your teaching style and/or curriculum.

Formative Assessments In Personalized Learning

Formative assessments, which can take many forms, are given throughout a block of teaching. Because of their immediacy, formative assessments can provide feedback that allows you to alter your teaching style, curriculum, or both. The instant feedback helps you see which students might be struggling and lets you personalize learning to meet them where they’re at and help them advance.

Benefits Of Using Assessments In Personalized Learning

There are a number of benefits to using assessments as part of a broader strategy of personalized learning.

Group assessments can encourage student participation and collaboration, while individual assessments can promote student engagement. As an example, if every student has to answer a question or offer an opinion, all students are “forced” to engage.

In contrast to traditional testing, assessments allow students to demonstrate their knowledge of subjects, without getting scored on a test. Most teachers give tests as a way of determining whether students are grasping the subject matter. But if you get creative (and proactive) with assessments, you can replace some of your traditional testing with assessments that can function of checkpoints.

You can get the information you need – about your teaching and your students’ learning – in a positive way. Instead of giving students points for what they’ve done right (on an essay, for example) or subtracting points for what they’ve done wrong (on a math test, for example), you can shift the paradigm of learning. Students can take more time, demonstrate their knowledge of something in a different way, and ask questions without fear of seeming stupid.

 

Learn More About Assessments For Personalized Learning

If you’d like to learn more about assessments, we offer a we offer a 3-credit online course on Personalizing Learning that covers not only assessments, but also student-centered instruction, inquiry-driven instruction, and data-driven instruction.

 

Education 4 Equity

At Education 4 Equity, we’re committed to providing the best professional development courses for teachers, delivered 100% online. We offer 1-credit, 2-credit, and 3-credit online courses for teachers that qualify for graduate level credit and have been approved for LAUSD salary points through the Los Angeles Unified School District.